4D II Project 3 – Time, Space & Body (Individual Research – Performance Art)

During the duration of this research, I was somehow attracted to art works that explore the concept of female sexuality using body and female sexual organ: vagina.

In this research, three artists caught my eyes: Carolee Schneemann, Casey Jenkins and Deborah De Robertis.

CAROLEE SCHNEEMANN – MEAT JOY (1964)

I was introduced to the artist, Carolee Schneemann with the work Meat Joy. This group performance involved eight men and women, scantily clad, playing with sausages, raw fish, raw poultry, wet paint, transparent plastic, ropes, scraps of paper, and one another to the pop music as the background.

This was a hard work to understand. It was a performance involving sluggish movement of human bodies tainted with all the wet mediums. It is erotic but playful, tangible and raw. It looks choreographed but at the same time spontaneous. Both women’s and men’s use of body looked liberating as Schneeman shows that women can be as openly sexual or sensual as men. Considering the time period of the artwork, the work openly challenges the prominent social taboos against public sensuality and female sexuality. Schneemann started to break down the walls with this work.

This work led me to be interested in using female sexual organs as a medium in performance art. I wanted to be narrow in this research as it was interesting to see various ways to use vagina to express artists’ ideologies.

CAROLEE SCHNEEMANN – INTERIOR SCROLL (1975)

Thus, I had to look at Schneeman’s Internal Scroll . Schneeman stands in the center of the space only covered in a sheet and an apron. She climbs onto a table and outlines her body in mud and stood in pose – used in life drawing class. Then, she read a book Cezanne, She Was a Great Painter by extracting a paper scroll from her vagina. She said, “I thought of the vagina in many ways – physically, conceptually, as a sculptural form, an architectural referent, the source of sacred knowledge, ecstasy, birth passage, transformation.” In the period of 1970s, the art society was dominated by men and by bringing the key point of her work to female sexual organ, she managed to link artistic creativity with feminist exploration of her body.

I imagine that it was ground breaking idea in this period as it would have been taboo in the society. She was misunderstood initially. She was invited by film-maker Stan Brackage (1933-2003) to introduce a programme of erotic films by women and the programme was titled ‘The Erotic Woman’, placing her and others’ subversive material under a stereotyping umbrella. The term ‘erotic’ attached to her work shows the degree of understanding of using vagina in the art work. It could only be regarded as related to sex and somehow appealing to the masculine demographic.

CASTING OFF MY WOMB – CASEY JENKINS (2013)

During my research, I did not come across works using vagina in the period between Schneemann and the artist Casey Jenkins. Thus, I will jump through the time to 21st century. The notion of using vagina as a medium that challenges female sexuality also became personal and intimate. Rater than shock or direct protest, Jenkins brings this concept to more calm, slow and meditative.

Jenkins knitted for 28 days with the ball of wool inserted inside the vagina. She goes through menstrual cycle during this month-long performance and the evidence of it is vivd on the rows of knitted wools. Jenkins says, “If you take a good, hard look at a vulva, you realize it’s just a bit of a body. There’s nothing that is shocking or scary, you know, nothing that is going to run out and eat you up.” and that “The piece for me is about assessing and being intimate with my own body.” She rather challenges the negative perspective of vagina by associating with knitting which is viewed as motherly and warm activity.

The reaction was rather odd for me. It received millions of views and was harshly criticised by the public. The response to the clip was negative, marked with fear and repulsion. Words such as “ick”, “eww”, “gross” and “whyyyy?” were immensely used. Moreover, the public, rather than focusing on the core concept of the work, criticised her face instead.

Jenkins wrote: “Commentators seem to be genuinely outraged that I would dare to do something that they view as strange and repulsive with my body without displaying shame. Women putting themselves forward in any capacity in the world is frowned upon, and for a woman to put herself forward in a way that is not designed to be attractive or pleasing is downright seditious. People are incensed!”

And that most of the comments labelled her as “attention-seeker”.

“As the deafening response to my work demonstrates, there is a hell of a lot of clamouring noise in society about what a person with a body like mine should and shouldn’t be doing with it.”

She ends off the article, “I have hopes that after the noise of the visceral reaction dies down on the web, people might take time to consider why they responded the way they did. That they will stop trying to dictate what I do with my body and spend some time contemplating why they feel such a strong need to do so.”

(https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/17/vaginal-knitting-artist-defence)

When I read this article, I found it so odd. When I watched the video, I was overwhelmed by the sense of serenity. I guess that still in this society, using woman’s genital organ is still considered societal taboo and by using vagina as the foundation of art, it is still considered bringing shame to the artist as well as her body.

DEBORAH DE ROBERTIS – ORIGIN OF THE WORLD (2014)

This work also caught my eye in different way compared to Jenkins. De Robertis took off all her clothes and laid on the floor in front of Edouard Manet’s celebrated painting Olympia and adopted the same confident, staring pose as the reclining nude in the 1865 Impressionist portrait in the Musée d’Orsay. She was in police custody for two days because of this.

Prior to this, De Robertis sat in front of Gustave Courbet’s far more revealing canvas, The Origin of the World in the Musée d’Orsay. Like the woman in the portrait, she exposed herself.

The public reaction, well at least the visitors to the Musée d’Orsay, was varied from Jenkins. De Robertis said “The public were completely on my side,” and that “Anyone who objected could just have left the room, but no one did. The museum security guards ordered me to get dressed and, when I refused, they called the police.”

Her concept behind it was that “I am reversing the relationship between the artist and the model, or between the public and the model, or between the power structure of the art world and the model. In my work, the model becomes not just the subject but active – an artist in her own right.” and challenging the situation where “the museum attracts people by organising exhibitions with sexual themes and lots of female nudity but then comes over all prudish if a female artist like me wants to perform in the nude.”

The fine line between the nudity in art and public nudity is unclear. Even in the space of white cube, when the work is online, it goes viral and receive public rage. It is hard to know the public reaction to Carolee Schneemann’s works as it predates to before internet where public reactions are recorded. However, I imagine that the understanding is rather the same and that the idea of using female body as medium of art is still perceived from the masculine dominated ideology.

I think that it is important to be aware of perceptions that are dominating the society. Only when I am aware of the preconceived notions, then I’ll be able to analyse and challenge these notions.

4D II Project 2 – Soundscape

Here’s the link to the sound cloud!

Artist Statement

This soundscape shows an imagined interior of a stomach. It describes a journey of a stomach processing a food. The sound starts off with a crowded food court and it coincides with a sound of a clock. From this point, the internal sound of the stomach kicks off. It is designed with a mixture of gears. The tempo of the sound is influenced by the energy from food. The sound of the factory is mixed with the sounds of squeaky machine. To make the sounds still within the body, layers of sounds of viscous boiling are interlaced with the sounds of the mechanical system. The soundscape ends back in reality with a sound of a burp.

Concept Development

I took a while to even start thinking of the concept. At first, I was thinking of bloodlust but it led me to craving for food that guides my way of life. It was hard to think of representing the sound of the internal organ. What inspired me was the body clock of me that always alerts the hunger. This led me to think of the stomach as a system that is fuelled by food. It was hard to produce the mechanical sounds myself which led me to use database of freesound. The recorded sounds that I used are the noise of the crowded food court and the ticking sound of the clock. From these sounds, I played around with the effects in audacity which transformed the atmosphere of the work as I overlaid changed squeaky sound of the elevator.

The system is slow and does not run smoothly without food. The food goes down the pipe echoing down and the system starts to operate and becomes excited. The speed of the gears turning increases. These sounds dominate the soundscape and there are numerous layers of atmospheric sounds. I tried to balance the background sounds of the factory and more soft sounds of stomach acid boiling.

It was challenging to imagine the soundscape without any example but I like to listen to the sounds inside human’s body by pressing my ear to the stomach. This inspired me to recreate my interpretation of the internal sounds.

Anyways this is the process that I took to create the soundscape! Enjoy!

Attribution

This sound piece uses these sounds from freesound: wetbelch4.wav by plingativator (www.freesound.org/people/plingativ…r/sounds/101182/), SH-6 001.aif by creebefu (www.freesound.org/people/creebefu/sounds/60125/), winding up an alarm clock.wav by ShotgunPicker (www.freesound.org/people/ShotgunPi…r/sounds/136521/), Analog Alarm Clock by bone666138 (www.freesound.org/people/bone66613…ne_rotation2.mp3 by Taira Komori (www.freesound.org/people/Taira%20K…i/sounds/213690/), Liquide by earlcash05 (www.freesound.org/people/earlcash05/sounds/319776/).

4D II Project 1 – Alter Ego

Alter Ego

Password: alterego

Character: Emily Prentiss from Criminal Minds

Storyline

The main message of the video is the existence of duality in terms of personality in me and how I want to embrace the two separate beings as one individual. The story starts off with two very different people. One character (Person 1) shows the personality of me when I’m at home or with very comfortable people. Another character (Person 2) shows the personality of me when I’m out and show to most of the people. Different habits, different environment, different tone and manner of speech characterizes these individuals. The crisis strikes when Person 1 accidentally knocks off the water bottle while multi-tasking (not paying attention). Person 2 quickly acts on the instinct and saves the computers from being doomed. Person 1 with quick reflex grabs the water bottle just as it fell flat on the table. This is the moment when the two individuals space/world exist in the same time. I tried to show that even though there exist two personalities that functions differently, they are still an individual and are capable of solving the crisis as a person.

Process

I started this project by profiling the two personalities. This is the first table that I came up with.

Person 2 1
Objects Laptop

Outer clothes

Tumbler

Mug with character

Headband

Inner wear

Actions/Habits Alert

Sits upright

Hands – not much movement

Focused on the screen

Fidgets with her hands

Comfortable posture

Rougher language

 

Expressions Straight faced

Talks to the person while not looking at the face

Cannot keep still

Holds more expressions

Then I focused on the artistic settings. I tried to show the characters’ personality clearly and vividly through the screen.

screen-shot-2017-02-05-at-8-45-34-pm

The left shows Person 1 and the setting on the right shows Person 2. I stacked a lot of objects as possible while I kept crisp clean on the other side.

Person 2 1
Personality OCD

Apathetic

Task-oriented

Smiles a lot

Thick Skin

Multi-Tasks

Items Laptop

Sketchbook

Pens

Formal clothes

Neat hair

Gaming mouse

Gaming keyboard

Earphones

Pajamas

Cat Headband

Environment Clean desk

Neatly arranged objects

Clean background

Messy desks

Trashes

Food

Stacked up stuff all over

Actions Concentrated on the screen

Rigid posture

Straight face

Crushing the paper

Spinning the pen

Babbling

Comfortable posture

Expresses emotions more freely

Picks on toe nails

photo_2017-02-05_20-49-59

This is the final story board that I came up with with bits and pieces of adjustments after.

At first, I was not sure how to include two characters in the same frame as both are acted by me but I realised that I could crop the screen.

screen-shot-2017-02-05-at-8-45-34-pm

screen-shot-2017-02-05-at-8-56-53-pm

I filmed different characters with fixed camera position and cropped each half of the footage and stacked them together.

The rest of the camera angles, I decided to keep them simple and constant with each portrayals of habits, talking, etc. to contrast one another,

Research

I looked at two footages from the start. I had a idea in mind to start off the video with two people playing a game and conversing at the same time.

 

 

 

 

ALTER EGO – INSPIRATION FILE.

This is my inspiration list for my character Emily Prentiss from Criminal Minds. I was drawn to her with her witty but also focuses on work. I felt the affinity with her as the duality in terms of personality is something that I have.

Songs

Christina Aguilera – Fighter 

After all you put me through,
You think I’d despise you,
But in the end I wanna thank you,
‘Cause you’ve made me that much stronger

This made me think about her resilience. Even thought strong waves tried to crush her time to time, Emily Prentiss will always stand back up, making her stronger instead.

Delta Goodrem – The Analyst
Free her mind she’s always the analyst
Silent space the culprit the catalyst
Trying to make sense of her life
Digging around in the dirt she’s a slave to the work
She’s always the analyst

Emily Prentiss is skilled in analysing people and because of her talent, she has her guard up around all the time. I’m also a person who analyses everything that happens around me.

Calls Me Home – Shannon LaBrie

 

I‘m coming home

To breathe again,

To start again

I’m coming home

From all the places

I have been

Home is very important to Emily Prentiss. Her team members were her family. She could sacrifice herself to put the team out of danger. She opens up with her whole heart when she’s with the team. My family is the most important thing in my life that supports me. Home will always be the place that I will go back to, like the song said “from all the places I have been”.

Poems

Life’s Scars

They say the world is round, and yet
I often think it square,
So many little hurts we get
From corners here and there.
But one great truth in life I’ve found,
While journeying to the West-
The only folks who really wound
Are those we love the best.

The man you thoroughly despise
Can rouse your wrath, ’tis true;
Annoyance in your heart will rise
At things mere strangers do;
But those are only passing ills;
This rule all lives will prove;
The rankling wound which aches and thrills
Is dealt by hands we love.

The choicest garb, the sweetest grace,
Are oft to strangers shown;
The careless mien, the frowning face,
Are given to our own.
We flatter those we scarcely know,
We please the fleeting guest,
And deal full many a thoughtless blow
To those who love us best.

Love does not grow on every tree,
Nor true hearts yearly bloom.
Alas for those who only see
This cut across a tomb!
But, soon or late, the fact grows plain
To all through sorrow’s test:
The only folks who give us pain
Are those we love the best.

Emily Wheeler Wilcox

Relationships is probably the hardest thing to control. I find times where I do not treasure the relationship that I have with my family. It is the relationship that I can count on without a doubt but because of this, I often treat it the worst.

Lady Lazarus
I have done it again.
One year in every ten
I manage it——
A sort of walking miracle, my skin
Bright as a Nazi lampshade,
My right foot
A paperweight,
My face a featureless, fine
Jew linen.
Peel off the napkin
O my enemy.
Do I terrify?——
The nose, the eye pits, the full set of teeth?
The sour breath
Will vanish in a day.
Soon, soon the flesh
The grave cave ate will be
At home on me
And I a smiling woman.
I am only thirty.
And like the cat I have nine times to die.
This is Number Three.
What a trash
To annihilate each decade.
What a million filaments.
The peanut-crunching crowd
Shoves in to see
Them unwrap me hand and foot——
The big strip tease.
Gentlemen, ladies
These are my hands
My knees.
I may be skin and bone,
Nevertheless, I am the same, identical woman.
The first time it happened I was ten.
It was an accident.
The second time I meant
To last it out and not come back at all.
I rocked shut
As a seashell.
They had to call and call
And pick the worms off me like sticky pearls.
Dying
Is an art, like everything else.
I do it exceptionally well.
I do it so it feels like hell.
I do it so it feels real.
I guess you could say I’ve a call.
It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.
It’s easy enough to do it and stay put.
It’s the theatrical
Comeback in broad day
To the same place, the same face, the same brute
Amused shout:
‘A miracle!’
That knocks me out.
There is a charge
For the eyeing of my scars, there is a charge
For the hearing of my heart——
It really goes.
And there is a charge, a very large charge
For a word or a touch
Or a bit of blood
Or a piece of my hair or my clothes.
So, so, Herr Doktor.
So, Herr Enemy.
I am your opus,
I am your valuable,
The pure gold baby
That melts to a shriek.
I turn and burn.
Do not think I underestimate your great concern.
Ash, ash—
You poke and stir.
Flesh, bone, there is nothing there——
A cake of soap,
A wedding ring,
A gold filling.
Herr God, Herr Lucifer
Beware
Beware.
Out of the ash
I rise with my red hair
And I eat men like air.
Sylvia Plath

 

This reminds me strongly of how strong Emily Prentiss as a woman. I aspire myself to be as strong as her with such determination and courage.

You’re
Clownlike, happiest on your hands,
Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,
Gilled like a fish. A common-sense
Thumbs-down on the dodo’s mode.
Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,
Trawling your dark as owls do.
Mute as a turnip from the Fourth
Of July to All Fools’ Day,
O high-riser, my little loaf.
Vague as fog and looked for like mail.
Farther off than Australia.
Bent-backed Atlas, our traveled prawn.
Snug as a bud and at home
Like a sprat in a pickle jug.
A creel of eels, all ripples.
Jumpy as a Mexican bean.
Right, like a well-done sum.
A clean slate, with your own face on.
Sylvia Plath
This just reminded me of how Emily Prentiss lost her child when she was a teenager.
Articles/Speech
“All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.” –Henry Ellis
In life, there are things that we have to let go and hold on. Sometimes, we do not know which one to hold on or let go but what is for sure is that we have to let things go often. Holding onto something that should be let go is harmful to oneself. Emily Prentiss definitely knew things to let go and hold on but sometimes struggle to let go. Letting go is one of the hardest thing to do especially if it is something that has been important but letting things go will take the weight off the shoulder immensely.
William Glasser  – “What happened in the past that was painful has a great deal to do with what we are today.”
Things happened in the past shapes me. Emily Prentiss had a lot of hardships and that made her determined and strong-willed. Painful pasts can hunt a person but it will make one much stronger and build a person today from them.
“Why should we look to the past in order to prepare for the future? Because there is nowhere else to look”- James Burke
Emily Prentiss did not stay in the past. She looked forward to future and embraced whatever that came for her. I admire her courage and I do find myself looking forward to unknown undefined future.
Pictures
These three images each represent family, her strength/determination and weakness. Her team members are important to Emily Prentiss. I feel that she is the strongest when she is out in the field and that eyes just reveals her determination and will. The last picture shows her probably the weakest moment in the series but she was not overwhelmed by this and stood back up.
Personal Credo
I firmly believe that I will face any situation with strength and determination but also not forget about my loved ones.
Emotions
Frustration
Annoyance
Happiness
Apathy
Trust
Love
Regret
Anger
Confident
Positive
Favourite: Trust
Trust is one of the most important factor that shows Emily Prentiss’ other side. Without the trust gained, people will only see the outside shell of her.
Least: Regret
She hates to leave things to regret. Emily Prentiss has to resolve the issue and resolve the regret as well.
Sentence Starters
I love spending time with my loved ones.
I hate people who look down at me.
I fear of the past that could hunt me.
I have always believed in justice but not the system.
I don’t want to disappoint anyone.
Focus Objects
Macbook is the main object that shows the duality in my project. Through this medium, the two characters are enabled to do what each wants to do.
Beauty products allow the character that I’m portraying to put on the outer shell that the world can only see.
Pens are one of the objects that the personality of my character shows through.
Cat Ear Headband is important as it reveals the another side of my character.
Just like beauty products, formal wear is like one of the armours that my character has to put on before she steps out of the house.

Project 3 Proces

The project ego is about making equations of

Me + Setting = Reaction/etc.

I thought of expressing ‘me’ with different organs of the human body. At first, I was unsure of how to continue from there. Thus, I focused on expressing my personality. Often, or most of the time, I am driven by cravings. I think myself as someone with simple persona. I will be happy when simple cravings are satisfied.

In the end, I came up with these 4 equations.

Brain + Information = Error. Information Overload.

Stomach  + Strawberry = Happy.

Liver + Alcohol = Love.

Intestines + Toilet = Pain.

Brain + Information = Error. Information Overload.

line-1

The overall colour tone is cold. For the last image, I thought of twisting the reaction of satisfying enquiry to image of frying the brain.

Stomach  + Strawberry = Happy.

line-2

I struggled with this line the most. It was hard to come up with appropriate images and colours. I wanted the colours to be bright so that it looks delicious. This is the line that I changed the colours the most. Initially, I just vaguely thought of food but I decided to focus on one and I remembered this memory of eating packs of strawberries at one go as I was young and till now.

Liver + Alcohol = Love.

line-3

This line is one of the most satisfying one. As I was choosing organs, I immediately linked with liver and alcohol. The colours are warm and cold at the same time. For the last image, I found this vintage alcohol advertisement and I fell in love with her expression. I thought that it really depicted the feeling I wanted to portray.

eb737f0fd01dfd2fab331163e6c74cbc

Intestines + Toilet = Pain.

line-4

Ever since I was a baby, I had hard time pooping properly. My parents had to go ER often to dig out poop out of my body. Until now, I still find it hard to poop and I also cannot poop often. So I wanted to portray the feeling of pain and emptiness of the toilet. For the last image, I found this image on pinterest and I thought that it portrayed exactly what I wanted to feel.

e8952287c10ac794005b953aca2c4962

 

Technique

slide1 slide2 slide3 slide4 slide5 slide6

Inspirations

Malika Favre

malika_favre_bafta_2015_film_-brochurecover_imitationgame-400x370 malikafavre_kuoni_06-400x370

Thomas Danthony

thomas_danthony_vertigo_pantone-400x370 thomas_danthony_portfoliomag_file2_1500-400x370

Project 2 Process

SILKSCREEN

Before we finalised our designs for printing, I got to try printing with silkscreen on tote bags. I learned how to prepare the screen from the printed transparency of the design, expose them to get the stencil. This process was new experience and I finally understood how the artists used silk-screening for their works.

photo_2016-10-16_11-51-28photo_2016-10-16_11-51-16

Before I printed on the tote bag, the test prints were done on paper first to make sure that the prints came out nicely. The class experienced problems of the prints not coming out properly the week before this so I made sure that the screen was dry and the prints came out as it is.

photo_2016-10-16_11-51-23 photo_2016-10-16_11-51-18

The pictures above shows the test prints and the final print on the tote bag. I prefer the print on the paper compared to the bag. I think the bag was kind of a failure but I learned what kind of designs work better on silk screen from this process.

PRINTED DESIGNS

This is the update of the final designs. I came up with total of 5 designs.

image-2outline image-3outline image-5outline-copyimage-4outline
image-5outline

 

Project 2: Red Pool

The title of the video is Red Pool.

Inspiration

I started this project with the inspiration from Toy Story. I thought that seeing from the view of insect/small animal is going to be different as everything around is dangerous. I remembered my dad catching lizards with various house tools like swimming boards. The lizard did not die very easily. That memory is still clear inside my head even though that happened when I was in primary school.

Story Boarding

I start with the transition from myself to the lizard. The lizard me is confused of where the place is as the lizard falls into unknown place. The animal instinct warns the lizard me that some human being is approaching. Warning goes off and runs away. The lizard me sees the opening through the door and camouflages myself with the baseboard of the wall. However, the warning goes off again and it changes to human POV as the sound of creepy laugh comes in. The human being captures the lizard and secures it on a metal plate. The lizard gets murdered by the hammer. Ominous lullaby comes in and the lizard me turn back to myself but holding the hammer that killed the lizard me.

Improvements

More camera angles needed to be explored especially in the scene where the lizard me runs away from the human.

Implied meanings can be explored in the scene when the human being kills the lizard with the hammer, like the movie psycho.

Project 2:Progress

The movie that I have chosen is Howl’s moving castle.

open-uri20150422-12561-1uvi0ti_281fe89f

The movie quotes are:

  1. You’re wearing that hat? After all the magic I used to make your dress pretty?
  2. I don’t cook! I’m a scary and powerful fire demon!
  3. I’m delirious, spots are crawling up before my eyes.

 

You’re wearing that hat? After all the magic I used to make your dress pretty?

image-3

image-1_

For this composition, I tried to create magic like illusion with the use of hats and representing the lady as the witch.

I don’t cook! I’m a scary and powerful fire demon!

image-2_

I’m not too sure about this composition. But I liked the expression that the girl has on her face, representing her as the fire demon.

I’m delirious, spots are crawling up before my eyes.

image-4_