Women Artists, Feminism and the Moving Image: Contexts and Practices

Description

What is the significance of gendered identification in relation to artists' moving image? How do women artists grapple with the interlinked narratives of gender discrimination and gender identity in their work? In this groundbreaking book, a diverse range of leading scholars, activists, archivists and artists explore the histories, practices and concerns of women making film and video across the world, from the pioneering German animator Lotte Reiniger, to the influential African American filmmaker Julie Dash and the provocative Scottish contemporary artist Rachel Maclean. Opening with a foreword from the film theorist Laura Mulvey and a poem by the artist film-maker Lis Rhodes, Women Artists, Feminism and the Moving Image traces the legacies of early feminist interventions into the moving image and the ways in which these have been re-configured in the very different context of today. Reflecting and building upon the practices of recuperation that continue to play a vital role in feminist art practice and scholarship, essays discuss topics such as how multiculturalism is linked to experimental and activist film history, the function and nature of the essay film, feminist curatorial practices and much more. This book transports the reader across diverse cultural contexts and geographical contours, addressing complex narratives of subjectivity, representation and labour, while juxtaposing cultures of film, video and visual arts practice often held apart. As the editor, Lucy Reynolds, argues: it is at the point where art, moving image and feminist discourse converge that a rich and dynamic intersection of dialogue and exchange opens up, bringing to attention practices which might fall outside their separate spheres, and offering fresh perspectives and insights on those already established in its histories and canons. Cover page Title page Halftitle page Copyright page Epigraph page Contents List of figures Contributors Preface Acknowledgements Introduction: Raising voices Who speaks? Inflections, enunciations Knowing where to look A collection of voices Who speaks for whom? Notes Lis Rhodes – Certain measures Note Part One Acknowledgements In conversation: MORE – Pauline Boudry/Renate Lorenz with Irene Revell 1 Elinor Cleghorn – In a tiny realm of her own: Lotte Reiniger’s light work Notes 2 Catherine Grant – Returning to Riddles A theory film Opening pages Laura speaking/Laura listening Her friendship with Maxine has intervened And, in her mind, she flung herself through the air Mulvey’s Manifesto Acknowledgements Notes 3 So Mayer – ‘Being a together woman is a bitch’: An ‘African American woman’s film’ genealogy of Julie Dash’s Four Women (1975) Acknowledgements Notes 4 Lucia Aspesi – Film Esperienza. The work of Marinella Pirelli Invisibility The centrality of the human body Light and movement Notes 5 Rachel Garfield – Prescient intersectionality: Women, moving image and identity politics in 1980s Britain Notes Part Two Negotiations and Engagements In conversation: Maria Palacios Cruz interviews Basma Alsharif Addendum Notes 6 Maud Jacquin – ‘Overexposed, like an X-ray’: The politics of corporeal vulnerability in Sandra Lahire’s experimental cinema Notes 7 Erika Balsom – ‘Look at Mother Nature on the run in the 1970s’: Penelope Spheeris’s I Don’t Know Notes 8 May Adadol Ingawanij – Aesthetics of potentiality: Nguyen Trinh Thi’s Essay Films Artistic practice in post-Doi Moi Vietnam The face of Nhu Quynh Art and collective capacity Notes 9 Sarah Neely and Sarah Smith – The art of maximal ventriloquy: Femininity as labour in the films of Rachel Maclean Notes Part Three Situations and Receptions In conversation: Club des Femmes, Helena Reckitt –An interview on International Women’s Day 2017 Notes 10 Catherine Elwes – Strategies of exposure and concealment in moving image art by women; a cross- generational account Introduction Self-effacement; strategies of abstraction and displacement Repositioning the gaze and the subcutaneous body Masquerade, impersonation and surrogacy;‘ wrestling with the icon Self-revelation ‘post-feminism’ Contemporary evocations of self Notes 11 Maeve Connolly – Choreographing women’s work: Multitaskers, smartphone users and virtuoso performers Introduction The labour of appearance and the virtuoso performer Women’s work on camera Choreographing histories of labour Conclusion Notes 12 Maria Walsh – Female solidarity as uncommodifi ed value: Lucy Beech’s Cannibalsand Rehana Zaman’s Some Women, Other Women and all the Bittermen Notes 13 Melissa Gronlund – Can we still talk about women artists? Identification Production Reception Academia Notes Bibliography Index PLATES