Feminist Theory - representation, the matrixial gaze

I also found a piece of writing by Maggie Humm who quotes Hirsch 1986 saying "modernist women address the increasing specularity of culture, as well as modernity's visual objectification of women by interweaving the objective with the subjective in visual images which, while acknowledging the material primacy of objects, do not privilege materiality at the expense of the psychic".

Humm goes on to say the following, " Where 'strategies' of representation in the visual arts, from painting to photography to film, have been institutionalised to lure our gaze and suture our desire to that which culture wishes to fix us', Pollock argues, 'Lichtenberg Ettinger's method permits a glimpse of another kind of vanishing point, a matrixial gaze', which is 'distinct' from the usual 'confrontation between practice and popular cultures' (Pollock 1994a). The characteristics of such a method resemble Woolf's modernist experiments; a use of fragmentary images, interruptions of linearity, traces of the imaginary and intricately worked surfaces".

Parallax - The Visible and The Invisible

Been thinking about the concept of parallax, how the same phenomenon looks different from different angles or perspectives and how that is an aspect of what this project is about. The visible and the invisible, the 'personality' and 'identity' of an individual that we can see on a daily basis, or that we can recognise in ourselves and then the hidden depths, the unconscious archetypal patterns that are there also, that influence our actions and behaviour but cannot be seen directly. They can be known but not seen. I have been looking at the work of Virginia Woolf, who concerns herself with both visible and 'invisible' vision, and the philosophical discourse around the concept of seeing and knowing. In effect the difference between our mode of cognition, the socially agreed designations for the material world and our subjective experience or consciousness.

Eating Kafka - Artist Portrait Shot's

Logistics are my arch nemesis

i hearby solemnly vow never to do a project for this ma again that requires relying on people other than myself. I am experiencing what can only be described as an ongoing logistical nightmare. i have one person who i can shoot this evening. two are free tomorrow but the studio is fully booked. three are free on saturday....but the studio is fully booked. nobody is free as things currently stand what with their jobs, childcare, or uni commitments on thur (i am free!!) or friday (yes, i am also free!!). The concept for each of the remaining shoots is crystal clear in my mind, it has been for weeks, i simply cannot get into the studio to actually do it. this would all be fine if there was not a looming deadline.

and breathe......

Rainer Marie Rilke

I am learning to see.
I don't know why it is,
but everything enters me more deeply and doesn't stop where it once used to.
I have an interior that I never knew of...
What's the use of telling someone that I am changing?
If I'm changing, I am no longer who I was;
and if I am something else
it's obvious that I have no acquaintances.
And I can't possibly write to strangers.

Faust - Goethe

"Gestaltung, Umgestaltung des ewigen Sinnes ewige Unterhaltung" - "Change and change and transformation, the eternal meanings, eternal transformation"

Tricskter

Found the following written online by Ellie Crystal. Typically the trickster is known to be able to switch gender or rather is neither one gender nor the other, but is still usually referred to in most writings as male, which is a bit silly.


"The trickster is a very important archetype in the history of humankind. He is a god, yet he is not. He is the “wise fool.” It is he, through his creations that destroy, who points out flaws in the carefully constructed societies of humankind. He rebels against authority, pokes fun at the overly serious, creates convoluted schemes that may or may not work, plays with the Laws of the Universe, and is sometimes his own worst enemy. He exists to question, and to cause us to question and not accept things blindly. He appears when a way of thinking that has become outmoded needs to be torn down and built anew. He is the Destroyer of Worlds and at the same time, the savior of us all.”

The Trickster lives inside and outside of Time. He is of our world, yet not of our world, so our laws will not always apply. Among other mythological images, symbols associated with him include keys, clocks, masks, and infinity.

The Trickster is a creator, a joker, a truth teller, a storyteller, a transformer.

We seem most accessible to the synchronistic gifts of the Trickster when we ourselves are at or near boundaries or are experiencing transition states - periods of major life transitions that seem to be occasioned by an abundance of meaningful coincidence. Personal growth sees not only to facilitate synchronicity, but also in turn, to be facilitated by it. As an archetype, the Trickster, the boundary dweller, finds expression through human imagination and experience."