Contexts

Unit 1:

Further Exhibitions that year featuring depictions of Medusa included:

• Ashmolean : Labyrinth: Knossos Myth and Reality Exhibition.

• Royal Academy: Spain and the Hispanic World Exhibition.

Carolee Schneemann: ‘Body Politics’: an individual exhibition visit to the Barbican

I went to see an exhibition of Carolee Schneemann’s works at the ‘Barbican’ Art Gallery. The exhibition featured her early painting works, her kinetic sculpture works, her performative works, video works, and installation works. I was inspired by Schneemann’s involvement of herself within her own performative art pieces such as in the case of: ‘Meat Joy’, which featured eight performers (including Schneeman) moving together on a floor covered with paint, paper, paint brushes, raw fish, meat and poultry. The photographic and filmed records of the performance redefined to me what might be considered an artwork that uses collage; a collage here meaning combining and layering different artistic materials. The floor and the bodies in the work became canvases for the inanimate and once-animate objects within the piece. This made me question how I could rethink layering the medium of film. The screenshot below the photograph of Schneemann’s ‘Meat Joy’ on this page is just one example of how I have layered film footage, while also combining human, bodily imagery with insect imagery. This was partially inspired by how Schneemann has entwined poultry and meat with the human bodies of the performers in ‘Meat Joy’. The intensely theatrical aspect of Schneemann’s performances also appealed to me and is something I have tried to replicate through my own performative interpretation of Medusa.

3 Teaching and Learning Experiences:

1. ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective’ by Donna Haraway

Rachel Finney led a seminar event in which our course pathway discussed the journal text: ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective’, written by Donna Haraway. The Computational Arts Pathway students participated in a discussion concerning the wider artistic implications of Haraway’s arguments.

Haraway argues that ‘situated knowledge’ is what promises objective vision. ‘Feminist objectivity means quite simply situated knowledges.’ (Haraway, 1988, pp. 581) By ‘situated knowledges’, Haraway describes knowledge with limits; knowledge that is seen within the limits of its context. This is cited in contrast to ‘disembodied vision’, which she claims distances itself from its context in favour of ‘unfettered power’. (Haraway, 1988, pp. 581) Haraway mentions an inherent violence within looking: ‘Vision is always a question of the power to see – and perhaps of the violence implicit in our visualizing practices.’ (Haraway, 1988, pp. 585).

This violence found within the act of looking has become a key theme within my research and studio practice. My research on the objectification of women in cinema parallels this idea of looking as violence – as does the more mythical theme of Medusa and her violent powers of vision. I have also incorporated partial perspective into my final Medusa film; through depicting Medusa’s own embodied, partial perspective in first-person captions as she observes Perseus. The captions additionally contrast with iterations of the myth that are told in the third person- those iterations therefore establishing a disembodied perspective. 

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2. Dr Eleanor Dare: ‘DOWSING RODS’ Workshop

Dr Eleanor Dare led a workshop event for the Computational Arts Pathway students of the MA, in which we investigated the concept and meaning of an ‘image’. At the end of the session, we were asked to create our own images encompassing our choice of tools provided by Dr Dare on the Camberwell Campus. I selected Dowsing rods as my tool. 

As I travelled around the campus with the rods, I began to think of the action as a performative action. I kept a video and photographic record of my first-person perspective while holding the rods and using my phone simultaneously. After an interaction with a student, I wrote down our conversation and matched this with a photograph of myself holding the rods, reflected in a window. 

I found that my record of this event was reminiscent of a piece of illustrated creative writing. This influenced how I approached my Medusa film pieces, as I decided I wanted to encompass writing, performance and props alongside each other in my work. I felt that these combined elements allowed for theatrical and literary interpretations of my work, – something which I feel correlates with the context of classical myth behind my practice. 

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3. Kira Freije

Kira Freije gave an artist talk to the Fine Art MA in the Peckham Road lecture theatre at UAL Camberwell College. Freije described her artistic process, inspirational sources for her practice and showed the students multiple sculpture works she has made and their display within gallery settings. 

Freije’s sculpted works were often made from steel and often depicted various bodies or bodily forms. Some of her works displayed the human figure in a steel frame with limbs or body parts attached to it that had been cast in metal, such as in the work: ‘flew close dust dust dust’, created in 2021 from stainless steel and cast aluminium. I liked the ghostly aspects of a body partially created in sculpture, and that body being cast in metal as opposed to a material closer to the softness of skin. This helped influence my use of clay and wire to depict the character of Perseus within my film work. I like how the material of the sculpt in both Freije’s work and my own exposes the process of making and the nature of the material, as opposed to hiding it. This exposure suggests a playfulness to me; as if the sculptures are puppets or dolls, it’s clear that they have been made and comments on the creative playfulness of the maker.

 Freije made references to poets in her presentation, such as Elizabeth Bishop, listing her as one of her sources of inspiration. Her interest in poetry and keeping a pinboard of inspiration inspired me in turn to investigate what poetry had been completed around the subject of Medusa in my research. This directed me to Carol Ann Duffy’s poem: ‘Medusa’, which can be found on the ‘Critical Reflection‘ page of this website. The embittered tone of this poem helped to influence my development of Medusa within my own writing, that would later be included in my final film work. 

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Bibliography:

Haraway, D. (1988) ‘Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective’. Feminist Studies. Vol. 14, No. 3. pp. 575-599. [online] Available from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3178066