If I had to choose an artist who most thoroughly embodies arts-based research methodology and practice, it would have to be Suzanne Lacy. Other artists (John Malpede, Mierle Laderman-Ukeles, Judy Baca and the Beehive Collective come immediately to mind) stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Lacy, don't get me wrong. But they all were influenced by her to some extent, either as a peer or a next-generation artist. I hope this comes through in the pages of Irish's book.
There are certain aspects of Lacy's work that I'd like you to focus on and write about in relation to your own evolving research. Each of the questions/topics for this week's reading address a key focal point. Some points may be more relevant to your particular research project than others, so I want you to respond accordingly. (By all means, use every bit of this class to further your own research in any and all ways possible. In my mind the worst thing you could do is waste your time writing purely academic responses to questions on topics that only marginally interest you!)
Respond to 2 or more questions (below) that are relevant to your research. Since each of you is working on something different, I will leave it to you to find or make the appropriate connections to your work. If none of the questions below are particularly relevant, please find something in the book that resonates for you and write about it.
1. Chapter 2, Embodied Networks, addresses the centrality of the body to Lacy's art practice. In this she is not alone: the body is central to most feminist art, literature, political action and theory. So what is meant by "the body politic" and/or, more importantly, how does Lacy's art make it tangible?
2. Look back at "Exploring Risky Youth Experiences," by Diane Conrad in Method Meets Art (pp. 162-78). Connect Conrad's example of arts-based research to the feminist idea of "self-naming" described on p. 46 of Suzanne Lacy: Spaces Between.
3. How did Lacy & Labowitz exploit press, media and public (municipal) space for maximum impact in their 1977 performance, In Mourning and In Rage? (The media-sphere has changed radically since the '70s. Does this have any bearing on your research?)
4. As Lacy's work grows in scale and complexity, it involves more research before the public event. You can see this even in her early work. If you were on the steering committee of one of Lacy's performances, what kinds of research would be on the table? )Hint: community organizing counts as research.) What challenges might you anticipate?
5. How did Lacy's background in pre-med, her interest in dissection, etc., influence her art in the '70s? Relate this to feminism's focus on the body and identity.
I hope you can find something here that relates to your research. If not, remember it's perfectly okay for you to create your own question based on the reading, as long as it helps you along with your research project. If you have questions or need help, please done hesitate to post your question here or send me an email!
Thanks & good luck...
carolyn
3. How did Lacy & Labowitz exploit press, media and public (municipal) space for maximum impact in their 1977 performance, In Mourning and In Rage? (The media-sphere has changed radically since the '70s. Does this have any bearing on your research?)
ReplyDeleteThe performance was thought out in great detail. In other performances, the ‘stage’ was mostly inside gallery space or an academic space. In Mourning and In Rage, Lacy choose the public street. I don’t think the actual time was mentioned, but I got the impression it was during work hours on a weekday when the maximum amount of people would be going about normal activities. “…claiming the streets as a funeral procession would.”
(Kindle Location 977)
They chose a busy stage, imagery (the funeral procession) and timing to make a spectacle that would set the media back on its heels. Even the press conference showed such planning, “The banner was designed to fit in the horizontal frame of a camera, so that one image-of the women gathered on City Hall's steps, with the banner
raised-could carry a clear meaning via mass media (Figure 21). This performance was a tableau enacted for cameras, set on the stairs that served as a proscenium stage, witnessed by the media audience.”
(Kindle Locations 982-983)
This has bearing on my research. My project is about a very narrow portion of the overall marketing of art and art events. You can have the best idea or art, but if you don’t know how to ‘get it out there,’ it is all for nothing.
In Mourning and In Rage reminds me of some of the events we plan in Housing. Of course there is not a political element, but much planning and deliberate actions are taken to make an event seem spontaneous.
4. As Lacy's work grows in scale and complexity, it involves more research before the public event. You can see this even in her early work. If you were on the steering committee of one of Lacy's performances, what kinds of research would be on the table? (Hint: community organizing counts as research.) What challenges might you anticipate?
ReplyDelete“…they worked with media staffers to ensure that
events took advantage of forms and settings that would enhance their effectiveness and visibility. (p. 75)
The performances had moved beyond the gallery setting and required careful planning and logistics. As with In Mourning and In Rage, as spontaneous as the idea was, the actual event was not.
I don’t know how it was in the 1977 in LA, but I would image the paperwork required to have a public gathering in the street legally would be enormous. If they didn’t have permission, there would have to be a contingency plan. The media had to allowed enough warning ahead of time to be in the desired locations but not break the story too soon. The sign and costumes had to be created. The hearse and driver had to be hired. The best route had to be planned. The location for the news conference had to be chosen (I liked the spot they choose…I watched Dragnet and was a fan).
So, the research required after the conception of the performance:
1. City permits
2. Legal team on call in case there were arrests
3. Media connections, friendly ones
4. Route planning
5. Props and costuming
6. Location
7. Placement of the banner for the best camera advantage
None of the performances took place in a vacuum. That is the beauty of Lacy’s work. It seemed effortless and spontaneous, but in reality, there were scores of women researching, planning and working for the performance. If Lacy had borrowed a racecar and arbitrarily stopped on the street and started her performance with no pre-planning/marketing for it, would there have been an audience? Probably a few people would have stopped and listened, but the impact was greater when all the background work was in place.
I absolutely agree with you that knowing how to get your work "out there" with maximum exposure is the name of the game. This true in all the arts. We have to be our own publicity managers, do our own R&D and marketing, and exploit our work in ways that appear to be (or actually are) part of the work itself. This takes special skills. Not all artists feel comfortable self-promoting. It takes a lot of self-confidence, an extroverted personality, and an ability to think strategically. Many, many gifted artists lack these skills. As a result, they struggle in obscurity as artists of equal (or lesser) talent zoom to the top because they know how to schmooze, self-promote and package themselves/their art in market-savvy ways.
DeleteSuzanna Lacy was one of the first feminist artists of the modern era to have the whole package and know how to use it. Remember that she rose to prominence after the Civil Rights movements of the '60s, which included America's second feminist movement (the first wave started with Abigail Adams ((1744-1818)), who advocated for women's rights as the US Constitution was being written), or what's called simply the Second Wave. Thanks to the centuries of struggle by women before her, Lacy did not encounter major legal or cultural hurdles to her success as a politically-minded public artist. This simply wouldn't have possible at a previous point in U.S. history!
Thank you for pointing out all the hassles that go with planning a large-scale work of public art. A whole, whole lot of unglamorous work must be done before the work is presented. Any glitch in the paperwork can stop everything in its tracks. The logistics are enormously complicated - including timing, as you noted in your response. If the cameras don't show up, the performance lacks that magnification that makes Suzanne Lacy's work so big.
I wish you would have mentioned the community organizing part of the research. This is just as important to Lacy's work as the legal stuff. In the next chapters, please pay attention to the grassroots work that goes on years in advance of staging a performance. It may be that In Mourning And In Rage is such an early work, Irish's description of the outreach element did not come through as strongly as it will in her discussion of works from the '80s and '90s. Anyway, keep an eye out for that part of Lacy's work, because it is what makes her a successful artist.
I guess I sort of took that as part of the organizing the participants in the staging, route planning. Lacy used non-artists in her work and I assumed that was the community that was being organized.
DeleteLacy’s pre-medical school gave her opportunities to see human bodies as physical bodies that were in the process of autopsies. The viscera under skin are horror images for general citizens. These experiences help her to see the different side of the human bodies and examine the sexual issues in her society. In Falling Apart (1976), Floating (1977), and Fallen Woman(1976), in order to examine relationship between horror and beauty, Lacy employed her art to explored taboo territory.
ReplyDeleteBy using these horror images, Lacy impacted her viewers and enforced to rethink the image of the human body, especially women body. Women bodies have long been considered related to beautiful images. In order to overthrow and reconstruct this traditional women image, Lacy dissented woman’s body visually and showed them to the public. As Irish states in Suzanne Lacy: Space Between (2010) when Irish talk about the reason why Lacy employed dissection in her art: “In both case---Brakhage’s and Lacy’s---[a] female body was the instrument used to explore the tensions of inside/outside, horror/beauty, and self/other.”(p. 55) Meiling Cheng also argued “by deciphering her own body as a text, …[Lacy’s] corporeal methodology tampers with essentialism” because Lacy made her body the “ universal sample of human physiology.” (p. 56) For example, in Floating, Lacy exposed the image of inner to the public. In this way, she used her body to reconstruct the image of female body and to show the physical aspect of the body compared to male body. This work helps public to rethink the gender issue from sociology perspective. Like Meiling Chen’s statement, Lacy tried to “tampers with essentialism.” There is actually no essentialism, but floating meanings by social definitions.
My dissertation is about two photographers and the relationship between their works, and memory and history. With dissection of female body, Lacy said she wanted to ask “’Where does the violence come from?’ How is memory embodied? At what point we die? What does evil feel like? These questions related to how female construct their memories therefore construct their history. Through her methods, I can use her way to see the history of Taiwan. Considering Taiwan as a body, I will dissect the body of Taiwan to reconstruct the history. To write a list that I not write about Taiwan, only in this way, I can reconstruct my reception and rewrite the history of Taiwan. Like Irish wrote in her book “Metzger sometimes told her students to ‘make a list of everything you must not write about.’ The goal was to begin the exploration of the self, ‘a vast, unexplored, and prohibited geography.’”(p. 57)
Hi Dr. Erler, I felt like the fifth is more related to my dissertation topic. That's the reason why I response only to it.
DeleteVery interesting, A Ta! I like the way you related Lacy's work and the ideas behind it to your own research. Yes, it is so very important that you noted "there is actually no essentialism, just floating meanings by social definitions." This will be crucial to your own "dissection" of Taiwanese history. The mistake of nationalism is its confusion of socially constructed ideas about a nation with the physical area itself. There is a reason why nationalism becomes very strong in times of war. People need to believe they are fighting for an essence of something - a national identity rooted in the land - to justify the loss of life and horror of war. When the war is over, people can go back to questioning the relationship between self, land, history, memory and identity. The solid body in war is open again to dissection.
DeleteI like where you're going with this. Keep it up!
#2
ReplyDeleteThere was definitely a community aspect to both of these two instances. For Conrad, it was tapping into a specific community of aboriginal youth and their propensity to become “at-risk” according to socially defined ideologies. For Lacy, the performative nature within her small acts of self-naming, when situated in a setting where audiences became participants generated a sense of momentum. As Lacy noted, “the watching audience traveled from witness to a performance to witness to a community process” (Irish, 47).
Conrad’s ethnographic research concentrated on a single community to find relevant similarities through the behavior of a variety of young participants while Lacy’s performative work, used participation in an attempt to explore phenomenological aspects of the process of making a community.
Then there is the self-naming aspect. Conrad’s young participants were, in an expressive, non-exclusively verbal way, articulating their personal and unrealized awareness of their social status as potential “at-risk” youths. They did this by contemplating and performing theatrical scenes that would have been within reason to occur to them naturally. In doing so, the young participants where finding a way to better internalize the social context they live in and, at worst could potentially react against.
For Lacy’s piece, One Woman Show, the self-naming aspect that Lacy herself chose to perform where key ideological aspects that are a part of the social construction of the concept of woman. She performed as the rape victim, prostitute and lesbian. By performing these roles, she emphasized there position as social labels.
This is where the self-naming aspect of the two instances connect. The youth participated in such a way as to better understand a societal label they were prone to be given while Lacy too performed the role of a persona that she was susceptible to becoming.
Super sharp analysis, Francesco. Members of marginalized communities must first address the fact that they are marginalized; second, realize they have been named and defined by others in positions of power (relatively speaking); third, rename and redefine themselves from the inside, not as others see them. Group pride and solidarity are necessary prerequisites to confronting power and challenging/changing prevailing stereotypes.
Delete#1
ReplyDeleteIn her 1974 version of Body Contract, Lacy brought attention to the monetary value of the body, specifically its parts by writing up a contract with lawyers over the selling of her organs. Here, she intentionally raised the question of how much is a human worth when considered as fragments or as separate working parts. Bringing in lawyers into the equation also connects the work with legalities and politics beyond that of the single body.
On another level, she seemed curious to fragment the body politic itself by resituating her reflection on “what did it mean to inhabit a particular body” (Irish, 43)? In the context of Irish’s descriptions, it sounds like Lacy wanted to explore the idea of being an individual or single working part while maintaining a perspective from outside that single body, as if to see oneself from the collective perspective of the body politic. Once again, this emphasizes the separation of the whole from its parts.
Irish references Silvia Federici’s comment of how “feminist insight […] refuses to identify the body with the sphere of the private” (Irish, 45) This seems to suggest, in the context of Lacy’s work, the idea of the private being a singular identity whereas the public is one of multiple identities. Maybe there is nothing really private about our bodies? So much of their actions and reactions are in response not to our commands and wishes but to the larger social world influencing our perceptions and ultimately the way we believe we control our bodies. We exist in public with our bodies. Our bodies, no matter how much we think they are ours to possess are only small fragments of the larger body politic that ultimately controls our individual bodies similarly to the indeterminate way our spirit controls each cell in our own body.
In some ways, it seems like Lacy materializes the body politic through the old cliché; the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The whole of the human body is more than just its organs; there is the spirit, the ephemeral humanity that cannot be centralized into one organ, one region or one sense.
But at the same time, it feels like she is suggesting the body politic is beyond the capacity of recognizing or identifying the singular aspects or fragments that constitute it. In this light, John Dewey’s analogy regarding democracy seems appropriate; the individual human would be the cell that makes up an entity. Neither can fully comprehend the other. If we as a nation were a body, we would have the same trouble understanding the value of an individual or a gender or a specific race as we as individual would have on appreciating the value of a single cell or organ in our own body.
Francesco, you write about the body/body politic as if it were gender neutral. Clearly, bodies are not gender neutral. The private/public divide is different for women and has been historically. Witness the fact that U.S. women have had the right to vote for less than a century. The concept of the body politic means something specific to feminist discourse, theory and the public art of Suzanne Lacy. Can you address this in your response?
DeleteYou might be right, maybe I am trying to take this from a non-gendered perspective. I realize some may say that's impossible. But when I consider Lacy's use of organs I see her message conveying something not specifically feminist. The organs she uses do not convey a gender-specifc connotation. I can't help but relate to it personally. I too have organs, and I too feel as though I am a part of the larger discourse concerning the body. Maybe I am naive, or I've done too much yoga...but I feel the body is not something that separates us. In my interpretation of Lacy's work, I can't help but see the body as something that unifies us.
DeleteAdditionally, I also believe, as a male, taking this approach to engage the work on a personal level is an absolute necessity if I am geniunely interested in internalizing the work. The best I can do is try to make meaning out of something for myself, my experiences and my sensibility.
Can you see that I want you to show an understanding of basic feminist ideas. If you aren't interested in feminism, why take as class in feminist research methods?
Delete4. As Lacy's work grows in scale and complexity, it involves more research before the public event. You can see this even in her early work. If you were on the steering committee of one of Lacy's performances, what kinds of research would be on the table? (Hint: community organizing counts as research.) What challenges might you anticipate?
ReplyDeleteThe complexity of Lacy’s work lies within subjects that need attention from the public. It seems as though, from what I gather, Lacy’s work embodies any issues against women from which she makes public and known with drastic performances to get the message across. Even though Lacy’s work seems spontaneous, a lot of social research was put into her performance based research. Lacy’s work could also be seen as a performance used in invisible theatre. Her performers know what will happen and their reasoning behind their performance, but once the public is spontaneously introduced to it, who knows how the public will perceive her work.
The challenges Lacy’s committee would anticipate would be a never ending lesson of what to do the next time, it’s hard to plan things and cover all your bases when you never know the outcome of societies behavior. To add to the list of what Jenise listed would be:
1. City permits for street closures
2. Counseling resources offered to any people affected by her performances (can show mercifulness)
3. Volunteers to explain the how and why of her public performances
4. Permission to interview human subjects for research purposes
5. On site medical team
6. Clean up crew
I agree with Jenise, the power of Lacy’s work is more effective when planning is in place. The planning and research allows more publicity and awareness to the public/society. Though Lacy’s work is spontaneous, it is thought provoking.
Liz, if I were planning a performance like this, I would want you on the committee! This type of performance art would not be possible as a lone artist. Public displays like this take a team. It is planned spontaneity.
DeleteLiz, First of course let me apologize for not responding to your responses last week. I have been thinking of you all week and what you wrote, and I have been meaning to say this: I love what you are doing with our reading on the body and how you are incorporating this into your blog responses. I think your receptivity to body and performance art informed by feminist perspectives is especially exciting because of the direction of your work as a teaching professional, an athlete, and your interest in medical illustration. Like Lacy, you have studied the body from a medical perspective. This explains why you are a successful marathon runner, which requires detailed knowledge of bodily systems and their limits. Most people think that running a marathon is just a spontaneous expression of energy, but people who complete marathons only do so because they have researched long-distance running and have carried out a carefully planned training regimen starting months or years before the race ever begins. You have shared your knowledge of the running body with your students in an award-winning after-school program. It not only makes sense, but it also delights me that you are excited by experimental theater forms and performance art. The work of Suzanne Lacy must really resonate with you.
DeleteYes, absolutely, I'm glad you mentioned counseling services, volunteers and permission to interview human subjects for research purposes. As I wrote to Jenise, you'll notice more and more community-level organizing in Lacy's work as her works grow in scale and complexity. In her piece, In Mourning and In Rage, she's just getting started.
I'm glad you made the connection to Invisible Theater. Boal's idea has recently made a comeback in the form of Flash Crowds, although I'm not sure of how much research and planning goes into this newer work. Not that Boal's Invisible interventions weren't somewhat loose and extemporaneous. Lacy's work is uniquely grand in its pageantry. I can't think of anything else like it. It would have appeared "random" and extemporaneous to the casual observer, however: you are right about that. I believe Lacy was familiar with the work of Augusto Boal, as his work was quite popular in the US in the 60s and 70s. More importantly, she worked directly with Alan Kaprow, whose Happenings were very influential in the US and internationally, especially in the 60s.
Anyway, I hope you'll forgive my silence last week. I believe I owe Francesco a similar apology. I kept meaning to go back to the blog to respond to what you wrote. It was a very scattered crazy week and I felt pulled in a hundred directions: trying to catch up with work after getting back from Boston, coming down with the flu, dealing with a crazy friend who's mad at me, revising an article for a deadline and so on. I'm sure you know what it's like.
Thanks to you and to all in the class for your patience!
carolyn
5. How did Lacy's background in pre-med, her interest in dissection, etc., influence her art in the '70s? Relate this to feminism's focus on the body and identity.
ReplyDeleteLacy was influenced by James Stanley Brakhage, who was an important figure for experimental film. He explored techniques/subjects that Lacy wanted to research and implement in her oeuvre. His style of work is raw, real and truthful. Brakhage’s style of work is left open for the viewer to form their own interpretations and judgments. In the 1971 film, The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes was used to set up a “tension between responding with horror at the images, and responding to the real beauty of the images (for they are astoundingly beautiful)” (Elder, pp. 398).
I viewed Brakhage’s film, The Act of Seeing with One’s Own Eyes and can attest to the questions of self-identity it raises. Lacy’s work follows that of Brakhage to “explore the tensions of inside/outside, horror/beauty, and self/ other (Irish, pp.55). Last semester I spoke of an accident I witnessed, of a motorcyclist (male) being hit and killed. I was more traumatized by society’s apathy versus seeing his body dichotomized. I have never admitted this to anyone, but I was so fascinated by the human body and what it looked like inside. It all happened in a matter of seconds and all I wanted to do was stare. I was standing in the middle of the rode dazed thinking “Is this really happening?” His internal organs were scattered in the street and drivers drove over them, looked just like road kill. I remember seeing a gentleman lifting the random sheets that covered his body and just staring at his remains, at that point in time I was disgusted with that man’s actions to disrespect his body, but I realize now that I was jealous. Lacy’s work inevitably makes one encounter self-identity, from reading her work and its purpose/meaning I have faced my own insecurities and anger. That accident was an accident I’ll never forget, I’ll never forget everything I saw and witnessed. Something happens to an individual when they see a human body dismembered, self-identity is questioned. Lacy uses her pre-med background to capture her audience’s attention and in doing so they face their greatest fears and potentially overcome them.
Wow. You watched Brakhage's film? That's impressive. So is your honesty about how you witnessed the motorcycle accident. When it first happened, you only mentioned your anger at the man who lifted the sheet. I'm intrigued and encouraged that learning about Lacy's work freed you to revisit that incredible incident and own all the feelings you had at the time. We never know how we'll react in extreme circumstances. Looking back at all the contradictory responses can be a big learning experience. I think there's nothing shameful in your fascination with the horror you witnessed. This reminds me: have you seen Cindy Sherman's "Disgust Pictures" (1985-91)? This work by a major contemporary artist could interest you.
DeleteI am posting a question to help myself to understand a few of the qualitative research components of Lacy’s work:
ReplyDeleteDiscuss some ways that Suzanne Lacy’s Three Weeks in May project invoked the arts-based, qualitative paradigm discussed in Leavy’s book, Method Meets Art (Leavy, 2009, p. 6-10)
For me this project by Suzanne Lacy was compelling as described in Sharon Irish’s book, Spaces Between, because it not only embodied the horrible reality of rape in our society, but it also included a significant move from micro to macro elements of that society. For example, it was stunning to know that in that certain area of town, Lacy writes on the sidewalk “2 WOMEN WERE RAPED NEAR HERE, MAY 9, MAY 21.” The individual women were the microcosm of two victims of specific violence and the project, itself, spreading across the city (and ultimately, the nation) through the use of media and governmental agencies creating a macro-depiction of the huge issue of rape for women everywhere. It is through the embodiment of these horrific actions shown in her performances that people can become aware of the problem of rape in our society.
The public was invited to the performances by Lacy, thus enlarging the scope of her message. Lacy’s work in Three Weeks in May depicted this “micro to macro” meaning making was how “she created contrasting experiences that occurred in the same spaces, much as she had pondered in Prostitution Notes how the same social spaces were altered depending on the people moving through them. Lacy and her collaborators chalked sidewalks near where rapes had occurred, for example. (Fig. 18) The outline of a body on a sidewalk provided a graphic “you are here” marker of violence and activated new meanings in locations that may never before have been associated with violence in most people’s minds.” (Irish, 2010, p. 64) For me, it would have been eerie to walk past these words. This artwork would have communicated for the individual viewer that: “it could happen to me or someone I know and care about.” This invokes compassion for the victims and a deep desire to stop the violence against all women, everywhere. In these way Lacy’s work had an immediate “stand-point” connection. You felt that you were actually “standing in the shoes” of the victims.
Suzanne, you picked up on the "magnifying" aspect of Lacy's work that makes it effective at so many levels. Without intending to, you also answered my question about the feminist idea of the body politic, in which "the personal is the political." The movement from body to body politic is in the shift from micro to macro you speak of. Fine work!
ReplyDeleteThe “body politic,” as described in chapter 2 of the reading, is referencing that “our”- female bodies are manipulated by the patriarchal culture as a “battlefield” that also diverts attention away from the economic systems that are predicated on and preserved by violence… (p 43). Patriarchy and capitalism are interdependent and violence enforces it. (p 43). I feel that so many issues are included within the context of the image of the body or the actual body that it is an effective method of communication within the visual realm. Here, Lacy uses the body to open the work to that context, and the many issues related: ethics, purpose, power, identity, exchange, and community, interconnectedness—emotional and instinctive feelings which are under siege by those in positions of power who assert it over those who don’t (or are told that they don’t) have power. In her works, Anatomy Lessons series, Net Construction/Exchange, One Woman Shows and Learn Where Meat Comes From, I feel she is engaging women and the public to examine these relationships from a different perspective, to see the thought mechanisms that are at work “automatically.” This perspective shift exposes underlying thought processes we seem to engage with, without much thought…. So perhaps we should, such as the “exchange” for bagged animal parts or the work or Prostitution Notes.
ReplyDeleteThose in power need to have someone to be “powerful” over. Community offers a “co” relationship rather than a power hierarchy. Ethics is often manipulated to permit such relationships to exist, when ethics are questioned, the shift of perspective occurs and those who are vulnerable are not so vulnerable anymore. But those with power will try harder to break down the vulnerable one’s newfound strength… Women, and minorities are always the target. Divide and conquer is utilized in an ever evolving form. The consumer culture is ripe with products to use to define yourself from the outside, with little attention or support to define yourself from the inside—that would make women think for themselves, as Lacy’s work is underscoring.
Her fascination for the ‘medical’ view, images full of innards, reminds me of the works by Jenny Saville. Her work, part of the Sensations show, broke new ground for feminism, and (body) identity, but she also was fascinated with medicine and medical textbooks, she works with huge canvases…similar in content to Floating, only different…
I am not that fascinated with examinations of the innards—I did see my own when I was having a caesarian section with my twins—Patrick was inside with my twisted uterus trapping him in, I watched the doctors work to free him as they flopped my uterus onto my chest, I saw it all in the reflection of the lights polished aluminum above me. That satisfied any curiosity I might have had after Bio Lab…
** I can identify with the use of the body and the context it implies as I work on my Making Meaning with Brooches topic. The brooch after all is attached to the body, one artist make brooches so large they reach across the body, and the pin point stabs into the wearer as she moves, always making her aware of it’s presence and her own movement. But the brooch is an attachment, not just of the brooch to the clothing, but also to the consciousness of the wearer- that it holds meanings and memories, carried into the public or displayed in public, which can hold intimate meanings, thoughts, identities, and connections. I feel that brooches can be transitional areas, that bridge the wearer with the public, which already had bridged the maker to the wearer- a kind of network stimulus…
"I feel that brooches can be transitional areas..." - you got it! Keep moving in this direction, Allison. I'm so happy to read your response to the chapters, which show deep engagement and understanding of the material. Like Liz, you related the work to a personal, visceral experience, the memory of which still deeply affects your body. You internalized the message and methodology of the artwork. I also appreciate your mention of the work of Jenny Saville, another important feminist artist whose work centers on the particularity of female corporeality and the social/political meanings that resonate through it. Anyone who isn't familiar with Saville's paintings - please look her up!
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