AMIE // INITIAL RESEARCH // EXPLORING THE BODY DEPICTION, HAPTIC, EMBODIMENT & DISEMBODIMENT

In my practice my interest lies within exploring the senses and the body. 

The body has been and can be represented using technology such as moving image and I am interested in how this has evolved and changed over the last 30 years.

Last year I focused on using commercialised, clean cut footage to explore haptic visuality and embodiment. 

This year I would like to take that exploration further and in a different direction by gathering older archival footage that creates a haptic visual and an embodied viewing for an audience. I am interested in finding different ways I can respresent the body and depict the evolution of past to the present day somehow.

I am also interested in the paradox of embodiment and disembodiment. How something that is 'disembodied' (detached from the body), can be viewed in an 'embodied' way (through the senses) and vice versa.  

 

Here is the first video I came accross that caught my eye. The touching of the artist's hands on the woman's face creates a tension which is uneasy and you can feel the sensation of the artist's hands and the struggle that the woman is going through. 

'Pryings is a graphic exploration of the physical and psychological dynamics of male/female interaction, a study in control, violation and resistance. The camera focuses tightly on Kathy Dillon’s face, as Acconci tries to pry open her closed eyes. Dillon resists, at times protecting her face or fighting to get away. Locked in a silent embrace, the couple’s struggle is violent, passionate; Acconci’s sadistic coercion is tinged with a sinister tenderness. The body is a vehicle for a literal enactment of the desire for and resistance against intimate contact.' (Letson, 2016)

Pryings, 1971 by Vito Acconci

This second video I found I really like the sound of the brush going through the artist's hair. It creates a real sensation within my body when I watch it.

'female artists used their own bodies to challenge the institution of art and the notion of beauty. Marina has said in an interview that during the 1970s, “if the woman artist would apply make-up or put [on] nail polish, she would not have been considered serious enough.” Through this performance, says Stokić, Marina comments on “the commodification of art and artist by critiquing conventions of and demands for female beauty in art and contemporary culture.”' (Kim, 2010)

Art must be beautiful, Artist must be beautiful, 1975 by Marina Abramoviç