I have been discussing with my lecturers about what I plan to do in my degree show. I have come up with an idea which I may or may not use for my final degree piece. I really want to put across to the audience my emotions and how I feel about myself and my looks. This is something really personal to me and I want that to come across. I am really trying to break down the barrier that I put up on a daily bias. So it is important to put myself out of my comfort zone and show to people that this is a really issue I have every day and I hope that other women will relate to my feelings and thoughts. I am self-reflecting in the videos and I am being the male gaze upon myself I and judging myself as an object. I am trying to make myself pleasing to my own eye so I feel more comfortable in myself and that is what I want to show in my work.
What I plan to do is make two videos one of me removing my makeup and the other one of me putting on my makeup. I will play the two videos separate and play them from two different projects. I will also put the videos on a loop and may also reverse part of them so at some point in the video there will be a point where I will look the same in both videos. Both images at one point will be of me pausing and looking at myself from both sides without my makeup on. I haven’t decided yet if I should make the projections life size or bigger so it adds more of an impact to the audience or would they relate more if I was life size. I plan the video to be full size me from head to toe; I will be wearing either plan underwear or some pale simple clothes. I haven’t decided if I will use the edge of the wall or not, from playing around with the projector I don’t think I really like using the edge of the wall or not, I am also not sure yet if that works.
Projection
After working with the images and over lapping those to create this double layer look. This idea has then leaded me on to wanting to work again with video but maybe playing the video so I am facing myself. The videos will be played in sync one video will be of me removing my makeup and one will be of me taking it off I want to play them in a loop or even play them backwards so eventually the two videos will be at the same point which will be me without my makeup on. The videos will be two full body videos of me, and I will use a projector to make them life size. After looking back at my dissertation I knew how I wanted to present my work to the audience.
In the studio’s today I got hold of a projector and played around with some ideas that I had thought about to see if they would work or not and how they would look. I decided to use the dark space to see how the atmosphere would be like when someone walked into the room. I played my video to see how that would look and then I projected some images to see how they looked on a big screen. I also played with where the projector was so I could make a divide using the walls so it makes it look as if I am looking at myself.
I think it worked well, I really like the fact that it was bigger than real life it made the piece seem more powerful and I liked how over powering it was. I think if I did use this idea for my final degree that I would have to use two projectors so I didn’t get this slope in the images. The room being black was also powerful you couldn’t work out where in the room you where and how far away you was from the Image. It was hard to take a clear image in the room but I took some to see and reflect on how it looked and how it would work.
Dissertation:
In my dissertation I looked at how female artist have explored in depth the representation of women throughout history through their art work and what I have come to realise is that I am documenting my own history with my artwork. However I want to show other females my emotions and feeling towards the issues I address in my art work, and hoping that they also relate to them in some way.
I discussed the theory of the male gaze and how woman are perceived, in my artwork now I am still working with this idea, as in my own work I am using myself and my own face ( like Cindy Sherman did). In this case oh I am working with the idea of the male gaze not actually how the male gaze makes the image be perceived as. Where in my work I have thought about the male gaze and applied this concept to my work as I feel that the male gaze control how I feel about producing the images I have. I said before I felt uncomfortable about looking at the images of my face, is this because I don’t think they are pleasing to the eye? The eye of the male gazing upon them, do I think that a male looking at these images of my face would be unpleasing? I think I apply the male gaze to my work as a concept almost as if I am the male being critical over myself and my own looks. I think that is why in my work I want to look at myself. I am self-reflecting, which one of me is the male gaze looking at the image and which one is the image looking back at the male gazing at them?
I looked at Manet “Olympia” In my dissertation and the power she had over her male viewers with her glaring eyes looking straight back at them, as if she had caught them out and she has catches them looking at her. She holds the power over her audience.
As Lacan once said that “we are beings who are looked at, in the spectacle of the world” and John Berger (1972) stated that “according to usage and conventions which are at last being questioned but have by no means been overcome – men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at.” Also in Renaissance images of nude women were painted almost exclusively for the male viewer. Women are often painted with their bodies turned towards the viewer while their heads are turned away as they gaze at themselves in the mirror. The woman is aware of being the object of the male gaze (Berger, 1972). I am being the woman who is watching myself and almost judging myself. I am being the one that looks in the mirror while others look on at me. I want my video piece to play so that I am watching myself apply and remove my makeup (my mask and comfort blanket).
I will use myself as an object which is something artist Cindy Sherman done in her piece, she has been a big inspiration through my work. The idea of the pleasure of looking and voyeurism pleasures come from a male audience perspective, this is something that Cindy Sherman captures in her film still pieces. This is what I want to create from my work the pleasure of looking but this is different as it is pleasing to myself not the audience as such, voyeuristic is described as..
“Voyeuristic when it is dependent on the object of the gaze being unaware. Someone spying on another is popularly known as a ‘peeping tom’. To some extent both photograph and film invite voyeuristic looking. It is the act of viewing the activities of others unbeknown to them. Therefore the act of looking can be seen as illicit or as having forbidden connotations, in cinemas we are voyeurs, watching people on screen who are ‘ignorant’ that we are watching them. We desire pleasure from this. The camera is also a voyeur.” (Etherington-Wright,2011)
Artist Research: Douglas Gordon
I have been looking at Douglas Gordon and his video installations he is a Scottish video and installation artist. His work is often based on a disruption of perception; by making his audience aware of their own fugitive subjectivity, he questions how we give meaning to our experience of things. I really want to represent this in my own work by making the audience aware of them self and there size and space. Making the audience connect is important to my work. The piece I really liked is Play Dead;Real time, in which Gordon films an elephant but I like the way he play with the size in his installation’s.
ARTIST ROOMS: Douglas Gordon: Play Dead; Real Time
Tate Britain: Display
6 May – 29 September 2013
In his video installations, Douglas Gordon (born 1966) plays with the cinematic techniques of duration, doubling and mirroring to explore the dynamic between audience and image. Play Dead; Real Time was filmed at an empty Gagosian Gallery in New York, where the artist arranged to have Minnie, a four-year-old Indian elephant, brought in to perform a series of tricks – ‘play dead’, ‘stand still’, ‘walk around’, ‘back up’, ‘get up’ and ‘beg’ – on the command of her off-screen trainer. The footage showing Minnie’s sequences of tricks is simultaneously presented in a front and a rear life-sized projection and on a monitor, with each one depicting the same event from a range of perspectives.
The viewer is presented with an opportunity to see the animal with an intimacy and perspective that are very rarely offered. For Gordon, Play Dead; Real Time sits between ‘a nature film and a medical documentary, to observe the subject in a way that could be used for a practical purpose but also had a very certain aesthetic. One of the beautiful things about film and video is that it can imbue a sense or sensibility that doesn’t actually physically exist.’
Artist Research:
Since I have been looking at video installations I decided to look at other artist that uses videos in their own work to see how they use them to create piece. The first artists that I looked at where
Jane and Louise Wilson
Jane Wilson and Louise Wilson (born 1967, Newcastle upon Tyne) are British artists who work together as a sibling duo. Jane and Louise Wilson’s art work is based in video, film and photography. I really enjoyed looking at their video pieces they had really deep meanings to them the piece I liked the most was “Erewho” The footage is projected on screens that surround the viewer from multiple sides, including overhead projections, bringing us more into the cinematic experience of the their work.
“Erewhon”
For this new installation, Jane and Louise have filmed several women in a gymnasium inspired by archival photos of ladies exercise classes from 1910. At the time, the concern of procreation in New Zealand was at its height. The medical profession equated a women’s adoption of physical culture with the regeneration of the population. These images perpetuate an anthology of poses in a rigid geometric setting, removing it from a recorded document into an abstraction. This footage is projected on screens that surround the viewer from multiple sides, including overhead projections – bringing us more fully into the cinematic experience of the Wilsons’ work.
