4-Hour Rokeby Venus

I made this copy of Velázquez's Rokeby Venus today as a prop for my performance that will take place this Friday at the ICA's 'Women Should Be In Charge Event". I will be slashing it in honour of the suffragette Mary Richardson who took a meat cleaver to the original at the National Gallery (details below). 

SUFFRAGETTE OUTRAGE
Rokeby Venus slashed with a chopper
Sequel to Mrs. Pankhurst's rearrest

Wednesday March 11, 1914

At the National Gallery, yesterday morning, the famous Rokeby Venus, the Velasquez picture which eight years ago was bought for the nation by public subscription for £45,000, was seriously damaged by a militant suffragist connected with the Women's Social and Political Union. The immediate occasion of the outrage was the rearrest of Mrs Pankhurst at Glasgow on Monday.

Yesterday was a public day at the National Gallery. The woman, producing a meat chopper from her muff or cloak, smashed the glass of the picture, and rained blows upon the back of the Venus. A police officer was at the door of the room, and a gallery attendant also heard the smashing of the glass. They rushed towards the woman, but before they could seize her she had made seven cuts in the canvas.

What does woman want?

These are the research questions I've outlined in the current incarnation of my PhD proposal:

My initial avenue of enquiry was to weigh the normalising function of certain therapeutic, self-help approaches against opposing feminist aims of radicalism and liberation. I was asking whether or not ‘happiness’ is something feminist women (should) want. Now I realise I also need to ask if ‘liberation’ is something women should strive toward.[1] One could argue that feminism critiques the norms and ideals of patriarchy, whilst at the same time setting up a new (and arguably, equally restrictive) set of norms to which (feminist) women must adhere and conform.[2] In wading through the conflicting pressures to be both an individual and to approximate the norm (so as to be identified as part of a group and to have a sense of belonging in the world) – I must ask which set of standards – those of feminism or mainstream women’s culture industry – should I follow and what are the points of connection between them? What happiness is there to be had in approximating norms or evading them? What relationship to power can be achieved in identifying with norms verses defying them?[3] Once women have (some) power (or happiness or autonomy) how do we then relate to one-another?[4] Since independence, autonomy and self-determination are valorised tropes for feminism and self-improvement, what value do interdependence, relationality and solidarity have?   

                Self-improvement is often judged as antithetical to socio-political transformation, is this really a simple binary or does feminist agency/ethics require a two-pronged approach incorporating both individual and group work? Suggesting that a woman needs to work on herself might be construed (by feminists) as blaming the victim, which leads me to another double-whammy question: Why do I feel the urge to self-improve and why do women more generally seem to be in need of a makeover? What is at stake in these transformations? Demystified of the commonly-held assumption that self-transformation reveals the authentic inner self and unlocks one’s true potential, what is the value in discovering one’s inner clichés and then divulging them?[5] What if I take myself seriously as a cliché or as a joke? Once the idea of the subject as masterful, rational and coherent is debunked, what use do self-transformations have?

                The private becomes the public (or the personal becomes the political and juxta-political) in feminist consciousness raising sessions and through mainstream media representations of women’s lives.[6] Confessional modes of address are ubiquitous in these varying contexts, which leads me to wonder which modes of self-representation or truth-telling are more or less effective in taking up a position to power?[7] Are certain confessional modes more helpful than others in navigating personal/political ethical conundrums? Because I use humour and parody in my work, I have a vested interest in questioning how comedy can be used to address serious issues of socio-political inequality. How might humour and other ‘light’ affects reveal complexities that earnestness might elide?


[1] Foucault comments on the problem of creating an ethics of liberation, stating: “[r]ecent liberation movements suffer from the fact that they cannot find any principle on which to base the elaboration of a new ethics.” Foucault, Michel, “On The Genealogy of Ethics: An Overview of Work in Progress”, The Foucault Reader, ed. Rabinow, Paul, London: Penguin Books, 1984, p. 343. Cressida J. Heyes also emphasizes this point from a Foucauldian perspective: “Foucault resists… the notion that any political thinker can recommend a specific programmatic approach to liberation, or indeed that ‘liberation’ is a desirable goal.” Heyes, Cressida J., Self-transformations, p. 123.

[2] For evidence of this see Lori Gottlieb’s chapter “How Feminism Fucked Up My Love Life” in Marry Him, The Case For Settling For Mr. Good Enough, London: Penguin Books Ltd., 2010, pp. 43-60.

[3] Lauren Berlant states: “The woman who was adequate to [women’s culture industry’s] version of normal femininity was as powerful as a feminist would aspire to be.” Berlant, Lauren, The Female Complaint: The Unfinished Business of Sentimentality in American Culture, Durham: Duke University Press, 2008, p. 178.

[4] Mariana Valverde points to the necessity of asking this question, stating: “feminists, caught up as we have been in a decades-long crusade to ‘empower’ ourselves and other women, have not thought a great deal about the problems of having too much power.” Valverde, Mariana, “Experience and Truth-telling in a Post-humanist World: A Foucauldian Contribution to Feminist Ethical Reflections”, Feminism and the Final Foucault, Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004, p. 86.

[5] Cressida J. Heyes objects to the claim that “the self has a unique authenticity; that to know oneself – a central project for the modern self – is to know the nature of this individual” and goes on to posit that “[t]he things we are expected to find out about ourselves, however, often turn out to be clichéd”. Heyes, Cressida J., Self-transformations, pp.3-4.

[6] In the ‘Critical Context’ section of this paper I will mention again in greater detail Lauren Berlant’s discussion of women’s culture as a ‘juxta-political’ space. Berlant, Lauren, The Female Complaint, pp. 2-3.

[7] In positing that confession is an example of truth-production “thoroughly imbued with relations of power”, Foucault describes the one who listens as “the master of truth”. Foucault, Michel, The History of Sexuality Part I: The Will To Knowledge, London: Penguin Books, 1998, p. 60. 

My mind is a muscle...

... and I've been exercising it by writing. This is the introduction to the current incarnation of my PhD proposal: 


Before I started making live performances I had never actually used my voice in my work. I had performed alone in front of a camera and lip-synched to appropriated soundtracks from TV shows; used my muscles to mimic other people’s body language or to match Hollywood choreography; I also re-enacted iconic gestures from feminist performance art. When I look back at my evolution and the steps I took to become a performance artist, I see it as a succession of escalating risks taken in order to build up the confidence to be me. I see a parallel in my motivations to become a performer and the intentions behind much of what I define as feminist performance art; to ensure that a woman’s voice is heard, that her perspective is made visible and her story is told. Likewise, the narrative of my career, as I like to tell it – that I have been transformed into a new and improved, more confident and poised, performance-artist version of me[1] – also bears a striking resemblance to the phenomenon of the makeover, which is ubiquitous in the mainstream culture industry geared at women.[2] In my conceptualisation of my work and my understanding of both feminist performance art and the pop cultural narrative of the makeover, there is an appeal to a notion of agency and an authentic inner self which should be analysed.[3] My research project therefore entails locating and evaluating the concepts of agency and selfhood inherent within feminism/feminist art and the self-transformation narratives of popular culture in order to propose a novel theory of feminist agency and an accompanying code of ethics.


[1] Recently I was invited to give lectures on my work at Sheffield Hallam University and Nottingham Trent University, but instead of providing a straight-forward artist’s talk, I delivered my performance-art lecture “Performance Art Can Change Your Life For The Better”. This motivational speech conveys the story of my personal transformation through various identifications with role models such as Judy Chicago and Sex and The City protagonist Carrie Bradshaw. Borrowing conventions from pop culture makeovers, my powerpoint presentation includes two self-portraits showing me ‘before’ and ‘after’ I became a performance artist.

[2] Theorist, Rosalind Gill argues that “a makeover paradigm constitutes postfeminist media culture” and that “to a much greater extent than men, women are required to work on and transform the self, to regulate every aspect of their conduct”. Gill, Rosalind, “Culture and Subjectivity in Neoliberal and Postfeminist Times” in Subjectivity, 25, 2008, p. 441 and p. 443.

[3] I like to claim that I’ve stripped away layers of shyness, timidity (and citation) to get at the ‘real’ me on stage or, more accurately, in the gallery. Likewise I often think of feminist performance art as women expressing themselves genuinely without having to play a part written by a man. And, as Cressida J. Heyes has elucidated, mainstream self-help culture relies on the false premise that working on the self through dieting, plastic surgery and other disciplinary routines makes visible on the flesh the beauty and goodness of one’s true inner self. Heyes, among many other feminist theorists also elaborates on how problematic this notion of a fixed self is because of its ties to essentialism and its lack of historical and social contextualisation. Heyes, Cressida J., Self-transformations: Foucault, Ethics and Normalised Bodies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007, pp. 4-5.

Recommended Reading: Self-transformations by Cressida J. Heyes

Tuesday afternoon in the library, I happened upon Cressida J. Heyes' book Self-transformations which is really relevant to my doctoral research project with its working title "Feminist Performance Art Can Change Your Life For the Better!?"

Here's a particularly poignant quote: 

"... Western feminism has urged women to look inside to find the authentic and diverse selves patriarchy has denied and suppressed, this very gesture of self-discovery has been deeply implicated in emergent discourses that paradoxically take the disciplined and conformist body as a site of truth reflecting the self within. For women the elusive promise of self-determination often displaces its own radical intent with the poor substitutes of dieting, exercise routines, cosmetic surgeries and makeovers."[1] 

In other words, women's culture industry uses feminist language to convey the misguided notion that outer-beauty reflects our 'authentic' inner selves. I can't help but see this statement reflected in the (should I say 'tragic'?) trajectory of Jane Fonda's career. It also reminds me of Suzanne Somers' opening monologue to her video Think Great, Look Great in which she states that it's important to understand the connection between inner peace and outer beauty. 

[1] Heyes, C. J., 2007, Self-transformations: Foucault, Ethics and Normalized Bodies, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 5 

I should be in charge

Oriana Fox, Impenetrable Power
Oriana Fox, Impenetrable Power

Bob and Roberta Smith: Women Should Be In Charge

20 May 2011

Join us to celebrate powerful female voices from the worlds of art, music and politics with a day and night of free talks, screenings, live editions, performance, music and workshops, curated by Bob & Roberta Smith.

From midday, learn about Bob & Roberta Smith’s work at our Culture Now talk, see the artist make unique art works at our first ever live edition event and watch screenings in the ICA Gallery.

The evening’s entertainment begins with a panel discussion on Esther’s Law, a new law based on Jacob Epstein’s sculpture of his teenage daughter which suggests society should create a truly representative political system in parliament with 50% female. In the ICA Bar there is a Feminist Icon Fanzine workshop, plus live art and music from Oriana, Denise, the Dark Hearts, Tim Sidall and others in the Theatre.

Presented in association with Home Live Art. All events are free. Booking is required for Culture Now.

To trash or not to trash, that is the question

    


I was talking about my tendency to choose trashy role models yesterday at the Trashing Performance Seminar & Workshop. For example, let's look at the fact that when presented with the history of feminist art at university, the woman I admired most was Judy Chicago, a woman predominantly 'trashed' by academia and art criticism. I could have chosen someone super-intellectual like Mary Kelly. She does have great hair. 

Warning! Executive Function Impaired.

 

Since recently falling in love I've come face to face with the fact that being in such a state severely impairs one's rational mind. These past three months I've struggled to keep up with my usual responsibilities and I've made some mistakes and been extremely disorganised. Luckily so far there haven't been any disastrous consequences - in fact, I'm sure to the outside world everything seems a-Ok. Nevertheless, I'm struggling to keep all my balls afloat and the extra stress and anxiety caused by such juggling in the face of my (hopefully) temporary lack of executive function has really brought home the importance of careful planning and time management. I recommend viewing this video which provides some really helpful tips!