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(After photography, short
film and filmed performance event featuring a model taken as photographic body,
receiving projected images and being cleansed of them¡.)
Received
ideas and the receiving body. And we receiving the spectacle¡ as the body
receives water¡ a reception where the image of the flesh remains, even as the
image is removed. Our removal from the image, the presence of the body
cleansed, at once a removal of what is received and a removal in place and
time, we part, once removed, in receipt of a gift.
Theme: art as covering, art as veil; so suggesting that there lies
a place ¡®beyond the veil¡¡¯ Topics: woman, the body, representation and art,
representation as art (concept and object), subject as object and therefore
personhood or interiority and society. The presence of a male artist and female
model repeat but also evoke (and so problematise) the
typical power relations of what is historically a male gaze. The medical
settings (of some photographs) are also gendered in terms of power and
authority.
The male artist calls his own gendered subject position, his
identity, and the power relations, into question. Evoked are the gaze, the
frame, the content relation, and the right to treat the body as a mis-en-scene; all called into question. As
with Duchamp (¡®guest artist¡¯ in the art work) in ¡®La mariee mise a nu
par ses celibataires, meme¡¯
(La Grand Verre, 1915-23/¡¯The Bride Stripped Bare by
her Bachelors, Even¡¯, and the fragment of body image framed in ¡®Etant donnees¡¯
(posthumous).
(Note the image where female
model covers eyes/face in the face of artist/photographer¡
modesty/refusal¡minimal privacy¡reference to the interior as sequestered,
separate, inviolate?)
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The Body as Surface: receiving projected images.
Projection 1: the ¡®Mona Lisa¡¯, Leonardo after Duchamp¡¯s, ¡®LHOOQ¡¯,
(1919). It is important to note the presence of humour
and parody¡ most ancient and most efficient means of critique; adding
grotesquerie to image acts as an auto-critique¡ Not least in the ¡®Mona Lisa¡¯
after its ¡®defacement¡¯, or appropriation, by Duchamp (the reference to Duchamp
reminds us of his other proto-conceptual art work, as mentioned above); so it
is that the projections, the ¡®beard¡¯, involve a double parody (the artist
re-inscribes himself after Duchamp in a further layer of parody¡). The match of
beard and body hair offers a grotesque visual pun with the resulting humour as proof of the mismatch of projection and receiving
surface, the body in question¡ so the becoming aware of the layers superimposed
on such in our everyday actuality.
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Projection 2; Violin, with an echo of
Ingres after Man Ray (¡®Countess Casati¡¯ (1928)).
Beneath the parody (the ¡®curves¡¯) the question of music in its relation to
representation¡ Even more than the Lyric (a subgenre of verbal language and its
writing) the most directly emotional of the arts (here not present in its
written form but as symbol: as metonymy, the instrument depicted makes music;
or metaphor (via synecdoche, a part comes to stand for the whole). The meaning
of the violin symbol. The projected curves of the violin enact the same trope
as that of the Mona Lisa and her ¡®beard¡¯; a visual pun (simile, metaphor,
resemblance) based upon a part of the body. If more subtle than the grotesque humour of the ¡®beard¡¯ this projection (upon, imposition
upon) the body, nevertheless reminds one that an implied comparison is taking
place¡ the ground of which is pleasure (predominantly, but not entirely, the
pleasure of the male gaze). The visual pleasure of the shared curves of violin
and body, the aural pleasure of music as the expression of feeling. And so
woman as (reduced to) place of pleasure (the metonymy of the ¡®beard¡¯ also
points in this direction¡). So the washing-off of these markings both signifies
and performs the process of purification from these unwarranted layers. So ¡®woman¡¯ is not reducible to curves
(nor indeed to ¡®beard¡¯), nor even emotion, music personified¡ A ¡®flattering¡¯
comparison to be rejected because reducing a person to feeling, is to deny what
most philosophers would regard as making up the human; reflective ability,
reason¡ (a familiar Romantic, or even philosophical, trope, to vaunt, elevate
something as Natural in the world of rhetoric, but to leave untouched its
actual or perceived subordinate role in reality).
Furthermore,
¡®Nature¡¯ too, as the ¡®nature ¡®of the ¡®object¡¯, may be called into question, its
role in our language and culture also put into dispute by the questioning of
the ¡®nature¡¯ (the cultural representations) of ¡®woman¡¯, or ¡®the body¡¯.
Woman as theme: but¡ ¡®woman can not be defined¡¡¯ (Kristeva). Woman (as such, in general) cannot be
represented; the word has a (general) deixis, but the
semantic and lexicological implications are under review¡ beyond negotiation is
particularity (and so perhaps notions of typicality). A given exteriority only
is shown, a (body) surface. ¡®Woman¡¯ is plural; so beyond any available
stereotype. ¡®Woman¡¯ (usually allied to Nature) here may be read as a figure for
society (Culture); the problems of perception and understanding configure all
attempts at understanding; we are left with an allegory for problems and
politics of representation, of art and thought.
She (¡®the
model¡¯) has no interiority, volition, can only cover her eyes; access to
interior denied, privacy, refusal of gaze as proof of interiority; an image, a
surface, remains. ¡®She¡¯ is also denied a voice¡ Only the voice of male narrator
is heard; so ¡®she¡¯ remains enigmatic, plural. Not (yet) specific, so liable to
allegoric readings. This latter point reminds that the allegory taking place
before our eyes is also one of subjectivity, of persons and their (here ¡®her¡¯) unrepresentability. Making all suggestions as to
interiority and feeling into suppositions and metaphors as in the history of
the Lyric (and music, so often allied to the visual sense, yet so profoundly
separate from it¡).
The body as image. The uses of nudity (no tabula rasa, the nude in art history as back ground to any viewing
of the female nude in an ¡®art¡¯ context). No innocent viewing. Photography and
film repeatedly demonstrate this conundrum - and the problems that inhere when
we try (as we must) to overcome the inheritances from the past not deemed
worthy of survival¡ (received prejudice or preconception).
Art as body/art
on body. Fashions/interpretations, image/history accretions as false, as
mismatch¡ no longer useful or appropriable? Except in this instance? As part of
the putting into question of this tradition¡ as part of the process of
generating allegories on similarly problematic subject matter.
Body as surface. The transfer of images of (a ¡®customised¡¯)
Mona Lisa and violin (echoing a similarly ¡®customised¡¯
nude after Ingres) to the body of the model functions as a parody and the
subsequent cleansing indicates that this process (of decoration, of a
particular manner of understanding) as limiting¡ as a source of limitation.
What there actually is¡ is to be left open¡ closed off from popular (or ¡®art¡¯)
clich¨¦.
In fact the projected images on the body and their insistence (as
an aspect of the photographic ¡®fixing¡¯ that has taken place on the surface of
the skin) increasingly resemble a form of defilement, a kind of dirt or
pollution¡ to be cleansed. Having pulled the viewer in with the lure of the
body (typical of art and advertising alike) accompanied by the history of the
nude and its accreted significations, the critique of its appropriation may now
begin. Together with its potential for allegorical usage¡ as of the allegory of
pollution and cleansing of all manner of object, including context and
situation (and concepts, with which we comprehend such)¡
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Reflections on representation and
meaning, on different languages (visual, aural, musical, oral
language/communication). De-inscribing historical clich¨¦s;
woman not reducible to pure beauty, or as the ideal nude of art history (as
surface), not to be taken as pure feeling, as music (as mindless sense).
Projections (as of painting, or spraying, or ¡®developing¡¯) onto the body as a
superimposition (so evoking the temporal politics of superimpositions, the
less-present on the present, so signaling a choice of past or future in
relation to the present; here indicating the persistence of the unwanted past).
Impositions¡ as the accretions of the unwanted. Painting as taking place over
another surface, potential palimpsest¡ Yet what is there to be discovered
beneath? A question of letting the surface material ¡®speak¡¯ (which it can not
here do, if ¡®it¡¯ did, then ¡®she¡¯ would loose her allegorical force). To speak¡
¡®for itself¡¯. Body as matter and body as person, as a relation of tension¡ (as
well as the inescapable tension between what is spoken and what is understood).
Opening shot (Short film and performance documentary). A
collection of received clich¨¦s. Artist, (young) female body, moon (with the
¡®movements¡¯ of the moon as periods, cycles, as ¡®female¡¯ or ¡®feminine¡¯; male
forms female; male gaze at female, suggest our gaze too is gendered ¡®male¡¯¡
Including the
reflection that all actual appropriations are themselves also individual, so
never quite irreducible to a public average; even if partially reducible to
context of appropriation and its complex web of power relations¡ and desires.
Image succession: moments from the short film: (First climax): of
music as of image flow, as a parody of image flow (the Mona Lisa and the
¡®beard¡¯).
To body
wrapped, sprayed, or coated¡ (¡®clothed¡¯ in an invisible cloth¡ the cloth of
received culture). Layers of paint on the body.
(Second
climax): White-lit studio space; model at centre, object of attentions (of
mainly, but not exclusively, male photographers, the media, the image
industry).
Open window¡
exit route¡a way out¡? The window, open, suggesting another place another
space/time, an alternative. The entry of air; wind, as ¡®breath of fresh air¡¯
after the claustrophobic space of interiors (a simple image, cleanly composed¡
highly evocative ¨C in the context of the prior flow of images, and, in
retrospect, after what follows¡).
Final: the
ritual cleansing. The model being cleaned¡ the massive symbolism of washing
(present in all religions and part of, if not required preparation for, most
rituals). The removal of the everyday in its negative aspect. With the artist
too being cleansed. Self-purification; an auto-critique; a critique of art¡
putting its own house in order, questioning the morals of representation of art
and artists¡
Washing away the image obsessions of ¡®art¡¯.
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Sound.
Commentary/verbal element: language and music as processes in time. Language
and music as purification: in time, so subject to change, requiring renewal in
the face of entropy so opportunity for renewal. Ritual may not only be a
backward form of repetition (of received clich¨¦), but a ¡®repetition forward¡¯,
as reinterpretation, re-appropriation, or change. A (Chinese) vase, a
container, (a traditional ¡®female¡¯-tagged image, as space) so a (Chinese) woman
as loosing the patina of space, the accreted images of history and ¡®art¡¯. (And
acceding to ¡®woman-as-time¡¯? The transformation, ritual cleansing as a temporal
phenomena¡).
New beginnings (the text and accompanying images of ritual
washing).
Where to find things
that are already lost? Where to lose the things that must be lost?
Quote: ¡®The end
is my beginning¡¯, T. S. Eliot, from ¡®Four Quartets¡¯.
Music (Ravel); impressionistic, waves of emotion, a little in
excess of the image, augmenting and hyperbolic, so parodic
- not least of itself. Offering exaggeration as critique; a reminder the
received position of music as ¡®feminine¡¯, as pure emotion¡ And by contrast,
Sofia Gubaidulina, ¡®Hommage `a T. S. Eliot¡¯ for Octet and Soprano¡¯ (1987), a restrained,
minimal setting of Eliot¡¯s poetry with its promise of rebirth.
General
movement: from received material, through parody, to ritual cleansing. What
next (what is left? What will the body, figural of otherwise, do?): A question
posed, but not answered¡
The auction, or publicity event, launch that frames the
performance event marks it as part of the art world, of the entry of the art
work into the art world¡ Reframes the art work as defined by its entry into the
public realm. Affirms its definition as art. Affirms its auto-critique of this
institution.
The body in
question¡body as allegory; as woman, as person (inadequacy of relation of image
to person) so as allegory of representation¡ of ¡®art¡¯ itself¡ also for the
social body, the body of society. Or as allegory of itself; allegoric because
beyond representation ¨C originating such: both its beyond and home¡ the
question embodied.
¡®The end is my beginning¡¯
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Copyright Peter Nesteruk,
2012