reflection: LXVI
In this essay I will be reflecting on my performance piece “LXVI”, I will comment upon my process from concept to the final piece, present the pieces intention and objectives and discuss whether these where met. The piece is an amalgamation of the 9 performance fragments created in the twelve weeks of this module. The final piece not only includes 3 of these fragments, but also sets out to explore my own personal reflection and answer the questions raised while creating and responding to the readings.
I first started constructing my final piece by choosing the performance fragments I wanted to include. In addition to choosing the ones I found the most visually appealing, I also chose fragments that I had created with the underlying notion of challenging and changing the norm. One fragment I decided to include was in response to Said’s Orientalism. In this fragment I choreographed movement based on my own understanding of what was East-like based on everything I knew about it. I used a common hand gesture I had seen in Bollywood films and popular culture to choreograph a new movement sequence. I felt it wasn’t enough just to perform this new Bollywood infused choreography I had made, so I filmed it at an unusual camera angle to change the perspective. I knew this is exactly what I wanted all my works and final piece to do, namely challenge and change perspectives, be that literally or metaphorically. My performance fragment in response to Laura Mulvey was, I felt, my strongest and had the clearest message and intention of disrupting the male gaze, hence my decision to include it. I wanted to further develop the stylistic results it achieved when including it in this final piece, but also the questions it guided my practice with, and that it also aroused within its performance. Another piece I wanted to include was my response to a group exercise. While following the script provided, I set out to challenge stereotypes and juxtapose visuals of the heteronormative masculine black male with suggestive effeminate erotic images of the black male body. With these three pieces I recognised and developed an underlying story and by threading these performance fragments with ordinary effects, I could easily explore and display the answers to the questions directing my practice and final performance.
Throughout the course of this module, four articles really inspired my creative process, Laura, Mulvey ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’, Kobena Mercer ‘Reading racial fetishism’, Jose Munoz’s Introduction from ‘Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics’ and Gloria Anzaldua Borderlands - La Frontera : The New Mestiza.
Psychoanalysis and the male gaze is a well-documented theory, however I have always been intrigued to how this theory relates to queer audiences and people of colour. I set out to experiment with it, incorporate my own interpretation and present a new gaze from my own artistic vison. Drawing from Mulvey’s notion of Scopophilia and Voyeurism, I wanted to further experiment with visual pleasure by placing a figure between the projection and the screen to see how this translated.
Within my piece, I projected black and white visuals, some of which displayed white topless men working out with the intention of objectifying them. I not only wanted to invertedly challenge Mercers argument of fetishising the black male body, but also pay homage to it. Therefore, placing my performance halfway between transversing Mapplethorpe’s intention and Mercer’s opinion. I did this to further investigate cultural norms and display some of the reflection not only presented in my reading logs, but also as part of my ethnography. My ethnography focused on a personal homophobic attack that took place within my community.
Munoz’s article touches on homophobia as being perceived as a white thing which coincides with Anzaldua’s argument of betraying one’s community when not conforming to cultural norms. So not only did I want to present a piece of work that had elements of “disidentification” and reworking of cultural codes, I also wanted to inform my audience of the factors that play a part in homophobia; one being the lack of black gay media, imagery and visuals that are set within an urban landscape.
I felt it important to contextualise my work and guide the audience from what is, what was and what’s now. I included stock footage I captured from events I previously organised to add a general viewing relatability. I also wanted to it to disrupt the homosexuality undertones of the project and give the audience something current and visually heteronormative to refer back to. Thus in turn making the images of men viewing men and the effeminate black male body more prominent. I also included a New York Times informative video about the history of black performers within Hollywood. Because I was using images of the half-naked white males from the same period, I wanted to refer the imagery of the black male at the time. The video states the limitation on the roles black actors had on screen, but also their importance off-camera in writing and contributing to some of these movies. They therefore juggled between perpetuating stereotypes and infusing roles with artistry while working in white dominated industry. This resonated with me, as in my performance I was playing to the common perception of both the black street male and the sexual effeminate gay. However, by infusing the two visuals, it was my intention to again refer to Munoz’s act of “disidentification”.
Although my work focuses heavily on trying to displace conventional traditions, I also wanted to have a certain relatable and ease of viewing to it. I therefore decided to use visual film, images and projection to perform and only included one gesture of sitting down so as to not overcomplicate the performance. The inclusion of a genderless angel figure was placed within the project to further displace the traditions of the male gaze.
Presenting to a small audience and online, it is hard to gauge how well it was perceived and although we were given the opportunity to be questioned following our sharing, I did not receive any direct questions about the piece itself. However, saying this, a strong part of my practice and my performance itself is to inform and challenge, something I feel my performance did extremely well and warranted the round of applause I received.
