Reflection 23/02/21: I decided to take this series of work as experimentation for Are You Watching? for Congruous. I felt they were boring and something was missing in these. I have realised projection is my medium that I work well with and with this experimentation of work I felt I couldn’t do much else with them.
I felt inspired after researching Rosler’s Semiotics of the Kitchen to turn making in the kitchen to see how it would impact the viewers. “Food offers a giant area in which the social overwhelms the biological” (Weinstock, Rosler, 1981, p 83). There’s many things going on like making breasts, women hands doing the making, a female body in charge, a kitchen setting as well as baking materials. Reflection 12/03/21: Possibly too much going on, I tried to projection and immediately thought it wasn’t successful – I didn’t enjoy it. This was a period of time where I wasn’t sure where to go next with my work so I was trialing different spaces/materials early prep for the Interim exhibition.
I was in amazement at Rosler’s Semiotics in the Kitchen, she put all her anger and emotion into her film without words, she did it with action/body language. “the transformation of the woman herself into a sign in a system of signs” (Weinstock, Rosler, 1981, p 85). – This is what I have been doing in my previous films, using hand language with squeezing/dropping to evoke emotion/discomfort.
Reflection 04/01/2021: Relations to Womanhouse, Breasts to Eggs – they slowly change over the walls from breasts to eggs, and in baking they start as a lump of icing and slowly become breasts – a desirable material in both life/cinema in a shared domestic setting – performative yet destructive.
I wanted to point to how women are even still expected to conform to these ideas by using pink baking materials, a stereotypical gendered colour for women. It’s the same with the stereotypes that are put on children when they’re born. It’s good that these stereotypes are now being mixed see below:
Reflection 15/04/21: I have continued the experimentation of icing, it works well in relation to sweet desirables and women as a delicate food contrasted with a male violently eating it – Sweet Tooth B&W, is more visually clear in reference to the male, as with Baking it’s clear there was still a lot of uncertainty.
I wanted to get across this fight against an old fashioned patriarchal role (a gendered system where men take the dominance role out of both genders) e.g. the male = breadwinner, provides for the family and the female = homemaker, looks after the house, food and children. See Baking below, I make the breasts using pink icing to refer back to Consuming 2 except at a new angle with this constant imagery of the breast presenting women like a sweet/treat by society/men. I wanted to create the scenario of a cook show without romanticising the old fashioned cook shows as they glorify the kitchen role. From the 70s “the newly emerging feminist movement wanted to get women out of the typing pools and away from the kitchen sinks and into the boardrooms of the land” (Boycott, 2017). – The female hands suggests new way for women? Reflection 23/02/21: The ‘desirable’/’consumption’ like material seems to be favourable in my work/always pops up – I think this a path to follow for my final degree project.
Reflection 10/05/21: Upon reflection from the formative assessment and deeper research of abjection, I think there was signs of abjection early on within my work, disturbance and control, especially in this Baking series. Ideas of baking and the body physical making these dessert like objects to consume sets this level of discomfort as food is “surrounded with a series of taboos” (Kristeva, 1980, p 75) and it seems to be accentuated when it comes to the female form and consumption.
See below Baking ‘To Roll’, I visualised the aggressive destruction of women destroying this gendered role of the kitchen/patriarchy and being the new wave of women who has control. Whatever “derives form your experience of the actions” (Weinstock, Rosler, 1981, p 85) you see within my films. Reflection 15/04/21: As said previously, it’s clear I was unsure where I wanted to go with this, I was dipping into all areas but it’s clear to see this was a stepping stone for where my practice is now. Being able to use elements of consumption without feeling the need to involve the kitchen space.
I decided to revisit and incorporate My Verblist, my take on Richard Serra’s Verblist. It would work really well here to explore the use of materials & manipulations. I chose ‘To Roll’ from My Verblist. There’s this idea where beauty is a “legitimate and necessary qualification for a women’s rise in power” (Koo, 2004, p 302). This is also used within glamorising women in the kitchen, not only to appeal to men but also other women, so they feel they should follow. Through using ‘To Roll’, I took the rolling pin and used it with force, much like Rosler did within Semiotics of the Kitchen, at 4.50, see below, she rolled the air and got more aggressive when using the utensil. I followed this but decided to roll the icing.
I aim to take these further and project them back into the kitchen. Note: Project on kitchen appliances may suggest ideas/visuals of Martha Rosler’s Body Beautiful series e.g. Hot Meat. This is what I will be experimenting with and researching after Christmas. I will also be continue to expand and explore with more clay figures to work with body image and types.
Reflection 23/02/21: These works didn’t have much substance, they felt flat! But, there are many aspects I have used e.g. the kitchen space and the issues that come with Rosler’s work, but confrontationally glamourising it similarly to how the cinema does.
