INTENT

I have been finding recurring themes of intent through the works of the case studies I have been focusing on. I found an essay with this quote in it (sourced in my dissertation bibliography)

Itis important to remember that there are three sites, or positions from which to investigate the meaning of an image; 1) the site of image production, 2) the site of image consumption, and 3) the site of the text itself (van Leeuwen and Jewitt 2006). 

This quote summed up perfectly what I have been thinking about the work I have been analysing and creating. I had been questioning whether you can translate sexual agency into illustration as obviously an illustrated character cannot consent of have power. Some may say Manet's Olympia is a sexual subject and acting via sexual agency, some disagree due to the fact a man still authored it.

When looking at these things it's important to look at the context. I feel it would be ridiculous to see a piece of work and try and figure out meaning without any context to it. Obviously there will always be some level of audience opinion when it comes to viewing art but you've kind of got to take the artists original intent into consideration.

Annie Sprinkle's work without any context could be considered as a glorified piece of pornography. The work I've been making would just look like senseless body horror without the context of the research project behind it.


Intertextuality describes the way in which the meanings of any image depend not only on their essential, formal features, but also crucially on the meanings carried by other images that precede or surround them (Rose 2007). Following the work of Julia Kristeva, the influential theorist Roland Barthes (1977) argued that that the (visual) text was a tissue of quotations, originating from sources outside of the text.

Burlesque Survey

After my conversation with Lux DeLioux I wanted to get some further points from other burlesque performers. I asked a couple of friends via facebook and also made a surveymonkey, I got some responses that were definitely helpful to get an idea of other views within the burlesque circles.

I think even though I only got a few responses it did help to get responses from actual humans living in the here and now.
Generally the views were similar to what I have found already, so it reinforces the findings that burlesque can be seen as a positive and empowering thing for women.

SFW PORN

There is this thing on the internet called SFW (safe for work) Porn, where parts of porn films (either in stills or in gif form) are drawn over crudely with MS paint or some other editing programme.

It's obviously satire and, it's pretty funny as the situations created just get weirder and weirder.

My practical work is definitely going down a more creepy and weird route, where some of the changes are subtle but this is still a very similar concept. Taking something created for a male audience and altering it so it's something completely ridiculous.

Guerilla Girls

http://www.guerrillagirls.com/our-story/

"The Guerrilla Girls are feminist activist artists. Over 55 people have been members over the years, some for weeks, some for decades. Our anonymity keeps the focus on the issues, and away from who we might be. We wear gorilla masks in public and use facts, humor and outrageous visuals to expose gender and ethnic bias as well as corruption in politics, art, film, and pop culture. We undermine the idea of a mainstream narrative by revealing the understory, the subtext, the overlooked, and the downright unfair. We believe in an intersectional feminism that fights discrimination and supports human rights for all people and all genders. We have done over 100 street projects, posters and stickers all over the world, including New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Mexico City, Istanbul, London, Bilbao, Rotterdam, and Shanghai, to name just a few. We also do projects and exhibitions at museums, attacking them for their bad behavior and discriminatory practices right on their own walls, including our 2015 stealth projection about income inequality and the super rich hijacking art on the façade of the Whitney Museum in New York. Our retrospectives in Bilbao and Madrid, Guerrilla Girls 1985-2015, and our US traveling exhibition exhibition, Guerrilla Girls: Not Ready To Make Nice, have attracted attracted thousands. We could be anyone. We are everywhere. What’s next? More creative complaining!! New projects in London, Paris, Cologne, and more!"

• keeping works up to date. "do women have to be naked to get into..." updated with different years and media - drawing attention to problems with representations of women. 
• Activism for all sorts of things (not just feminism). Got a statement behind the work. 
• Simple infographic style, bold colours, straight to the point. 
• "do women have to be naked to get into music videos" - think this clearly draws a parallel between classical nude paintings and representations of women in modern media, for people who didn't see this before. Think the image is also from Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines?? - See Lad Culture post. 

LAD CULTURE

Thinking about the gaze and media intended for men how could I not think of the humble 'Lads Mag' 

I bought one for research, or tried to, what I actually bought was a straight up porn magazine rather than a softer 'lads mag' but the visual stylings are much the same, just slightly more sexually explicit rather than just playfully suggestive. 

Striptease Culture by Brian McNair has some interesting points about lad culture and other ways in which men fit into this wacky world. 

 The basics are that at some point it became popular for men to pay attention to their grooming etc which meant images of men were bearing similarity to images of women. Masculinity had become feminised. Lad culture is a response to this, by overstepping the masculinity levels. "the new lad rediscovered the simple pleasures of football, beer and birds" (McNair, p159), which really highlights a point I made in my essay about the need to control women because masculinity is so fragile. 

'Lad Culture is an acceptance of the triumph of feminism. The lads know their preoccupations are trivial and they wallow, like defiant children in that triviality' ( appleyard, b (1998) in mcnair year, p/160)

The fact that this even exists is worrying : https://www.studentmoneysaver.co.uk/article/can-you-spot-which-quotes-are-from-lad-mags-and-which-quotes-are-from-rapists/

Male orientated culture views femininity as second class, when men themselves are feminised there is this violent backlash, in a need to protect their masculinity and remain dominant.

This still from Robin Thicke's Blurred Lines music video relates to the view that nudity makes a display of the body for people who are clothed. The intended audience is likely male, who look upon the woman as an object, along with the lyrics "I know you want it". The man is cast as dominant, via stripping the woman. The positive reinforcement of violence against women through popular media, perpetuates rape culture and male dominance. 

I believe there is a parallel between this modern music video and ye olde paintings. One that springs to mind is this by Eduard Manet, depicting a nude woman with clothed men. 

PRODUCTS AND PROPOSALS

I will be creating some series' of images taken from 'lads magazines', and digitally altered so the images are just plain weird. I plan to start them off normal and have them weirder as they go along. They could just be a standalone piece or could be slipped inside an actual magazine, so it has some real life protest/intervention value.

I may also do a couple of larger prints of advert pages, where the text will be altered so it just says stupid things that are not sexual at all.


THINGS I WANT TO PROPOSE 

I kind of had this thought last minute as I know this project just has to respond, and technically doesn't really have to be strictly illustration, but I would like to have an illustrative element to my work.

I want to create a few pin up style drawings, using already existing pin ups as a basis.

I would also like to alter a few classical paintings in the same way I am altering the photographs (painting small extra bits and adding them in)

I want to propose an exhibition of perhaps three different 'interactive' scenes, a lords private room where a classical painting would be kept, a teenage boys bedroom with a magazine on the bed and posters on the wall, and a vintage mechanics with pin up posters / a calendar.

I feel as if this proposal is more exciting, and this way I can include a bit more of my own illustrative practice rather than just digitally altered weirdness. And it links the different elements of things I have researched throughout this project.

PRACTICAL: Photoshop Experiments

John Berger's Ways of Seeing includes a photo essay which highlights how women have been objectified through various media throughout history, including but not limited to classical painting and advertising. 

Images of women are displayed next to images of meat, showing how women's bodies are reduced to a product for consumption rather than a human being - though this isn't necessarily considered by viewers until it is really blatantly put together, which it what I have attempted to do here by layering meat over an image of a woman. 

Visually I'm really enjoying this (both images were sourced from google), as I think it gives the implication of muscle and flesh beneath the skin - like some of the sketches I had done. 

Re-appropriating photographs originally from lads magazines links to my dissertation as that basically centres round re-appropriating imagery that was intended for the male gaze. It links to feminist intervention, as I intend to make little inserts that could be slipped into a lads mag. 

Again I have been working with eye motifs, I think it's really fun, because just adding even one extra eye can disrupt a whole image. It turns the gaze back on the viewer.

This was a suggestion from someone, that the body just dissappears. While being totally weird I think this image also implies the erasure of elements of womanhood that go into creating the 'ideal' woman. 

I asked a few people what they think would make weird images as I feel like I was making really similar images over and over again, some of the suggestions included

• Vagina face
• Face vagina
• Tentacle
• The body beneath the clothes is just nothingness
• too many nipples but only on the boobs
• hand boobs
• nipples than open up like a star nose moles nose
• nipples that are toes
• boobs that are mirrors 

All of them I very much like the ideas of. I kind of thought 'these things aren't that weird' and then I realised the thoughts were definitely making me uncomfortable. 

These experiments are working but I need to start getting them into the context of the lads mag rather than just standalone pieces. Luckily I have purchased a magazine and intend to scan in and alter some of the sets of images from there. 

The Explicit Body In Performance - Rebecca Schneider

"if "seeing through" is the etymological root of perspective then seeing back through implies a mostmodern turn on that perspectivalism, a doubling back over uniocular vision, so see, " 126

"redressing a space structured to render being seen and being blind identical, to render bearing vision and being dislocated (invisible to the seen) synonymous" 126

"In making her split explicit for purposes of explication, the explicit body performer invokes her historic delimination at the same time that she attempts to redress it as "seer", showing the show.  126/7

"split subjectivity is in infinite and insatiate and tangles in its own thorny paradoxes" - 127

"i dont take the advice of men who only talk to themselves"

"the body marked female has signified the feminized realm of representation, and the obsessive representation of woman in terms of desirability has served to inscribe the agency of the representer as masculine" - 51

women are not considered "seers" and are conditioned not to see. Giving them that right would allow them agency to create (schneider,

"when the familiar is made strange, when the norm is recognised as queer" (schneider, year, p.45)

Carolee Schneeman states her art is made via her "creative female will" as "she wanted her body to remain erotic, sexual, both "desired and desiring" ' (schneider, year, p.37).

"the nude as the artists, not just as the artist's (active) subject" (schneider, year, p.36)

"men can use beautiful, sexy women as neutral objects or surfaces, but when women use their own faces and bodies, they are immediately accused of narcissism" (lippard in schneider, year, p.35)

A lot of really interesting quotes regarding the gaze and the concept of being both a subject and an object. 

The themes of man as seer and woman as seen is common throughout theories such as this, John Berger, Mulvey and Coward as in this dynamic, man is offered power and women are not - this suggests that by reversing the roles the gaze can be subverted. 

Tutorial

OK. MOST STUFF IS HAPPENING. I JUST NEED TO EVIDENCE THE SYNTHESIS BETWEEN MY PRACTICAL WORK AND MY DISSERTATION. 

(I kind of feel like I do this? or that I'm saying the same thing 400 times but I'm not communicating the synthesis right?)