I'm glad that others have touched on this aspect of the piece. And of course Marc (one of the best and well read feminists I know) brings up some.of the main problem wrong here.
It reminds me of the videos of Marilyn Manson, while claiming to represent the underdog, the disenfranchised and the 'ugly' in actuality only defended the male version of these things. His videos were full of socially/financially (?) acceptable women. so not so different from any other mainstream video then. cheers m Sent from my mind <div>-------- Original message --------</div><div>From: marc garrett <[email protected]> </div><div>Date:24/04/2014 12:32 (GMT+00:00) </div><div>To: NetBehaviour for networked distributed creativity <[email protected]> </div><div>Subject: Re: [NetBehaviour] Angry women (still?) </div><div> </div>Hi Isabel, I agree with you when you say “This particular work just strikes me as sad, and not at all emancipatory.” > Just a thought regarding the idea of the female body as a product in this > context: >this may be grossly generalizing (please correct if wrong) but I've noticed >before >that female artists who show themselves naked in their work almost always have >conventionally beautiful bodies. You say “I've noticed before that female artists who show themselves naked in their work almost always have conventionally beautiful bodies”, This does seem to support my argument that women’s bodies are more readily accepted in mainstream culture if they conform to its ideals of what a female body is meant to look like. Thus, she becomes part of a cultural commodity - Moire’s body is a product to sell as art and as part of a larger, systemic objectification of woman and this can extend to men as well. This was well critiqued recently, by Susan Bordo in ’Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body’ when she looked at the historical and current representation of women in history and in popular culture, offering a deep insight into western culture’s objectification of women's bodies, from a male classical gaze right up to the neoliberal gaze in contemporary culture. A recent example of how women have trouble in mainstream culture when not fitting into conventional tropes of how women are supposed be, and indeed, should look like, is the incident with Mary Beard, after she was on the panel of Question Time on the BBC.” My appearance on Question Time prompted a web post that has in the last few days discussed my pubic hair (do I brush the floor with it), whether I need rogering (that comment was taken down, as was the speculation about the capaciousness of my vagina, and the plan to plant a d*** in my mouth)," writes Beard. http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/jan/21/mary-beard-suffers-twitter-abuse This reflects a society smothered by top-down orientated mediation, dictated by a celebrity culture replacing critical awareness and a much needed questioning of how things really are, where the subtle and not so subtle domination by market interests of cultural production (at all levels) and its vapid dialogue, denies us all access to a wider spectrum of creative expression, especially those that engage in subjects that conflict with the agendas of those in power. And Moire's performance has no conflict with those in power because women's bodies are already owned in history and in the media, and her artistic actions add to the already disenfranchisement of not only women but also critical art on the whole. Wishing you well. marc Hi, Just a thought regarding the idea of the female body as a product in this context: this may be grossly generalizing (please correct if wrong) but I've noticed before that female artists who show themselves naked in their work almost always have conventionally beautiful bodies. perhaps this is why they feel comfortable showing them? This particular work just strikes me as sad, and not at all emancipatory. On 24 April 2014 11:29, marc garrett <[email protected]> wrote: Hi Mark, Thanks for sharing your latest essay ‘Angry women (still?)’ to the list… I do have a some thoughts on the matter. My first impression was on hearing about “Artist Drops Paint-Filled Eggs From Her Vagina To Create Art” was, so what? It’s boring… Then you posted on the list regarding your essay on the matter. I’d say your representation of birth in your essay needs a bit more unpacking. Because saying “child birth as the one true creative act of humanity”. Leaves us with so much unresolved and unanswered, it’s all up in the air. For instance, it would be less ambiguous if there were examples in your text that included other female artists ideas on the subject, with their own societal and artistic contexts adding resonance to the questions you ask. Moire’s performance is bound within a psychological, ‘passive aggressive’ desperation. It is ‘not’ an act of female liberation; for her or any other women, it is an act of an individual submitting to ‘mediation’ as part of the spectacle. It does not challenge anything other than liberation, emancipation and feminism itself. In fact, it dis-empowers women artists and puts them in direct competition with her. I can almost hear the many ‘shallow’ curators (male & female) in the traditional realms of the so called 'contemporary' art world - thinking to themselves - oh yes, this will get media attention. It is ‘not’ an act of female empowerment precisely because female expression in wider society is only allowed to have presence as celebrity or via their bodies and not their minds. Unless they already come from a privileged background then they can be involved in social commentary in the New Statesman or the Guardian etc ;-) There is no reclaiming of the female identity or female emancipation here, or related societal liberation if it is wholly reliant on ‘female’ body as a product, a commodity within a framework of contemporary art and mainstream culture dedicated to neo-liberalist values. It is a contradiction. To me, it just looks like Moire is performing an art version of Miley Cyrus’s Twerking. Which I suppose is OK, but it means nothing other than desperation to be seen in terms that only relates to the individual's own desperate desire to be seen by many, but is this really enough? Wishing yo well. marc Hi NetBees I know a few of you will have seen/read about Milo Moire's Plopegg piece for the 2014 Cologne Art Fair. I'm not sure what I make of it, so wrote a short jumbled lot of thoughts about it (see second link below). I was wonder what others make of her work? http://designtaxi.com/news/365200/Artist-Drops-Paint-Filled-Eggs-From-Her-Vagina-To-Create-Art http://www.memecortex.net/blog/?p=1094 Cheers all, Mark _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour -- http://isabelbrison.com _______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list [email protected] http://www.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
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