Artist Statement
Since Laura Mulvey wrote her seminal text, ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ in 1975 much has been said of the male gaze. Its rules and regulations over the feminine body are easily understood. However, despite the fact we understand it well and still feel its influence today, it does deny the presence of both a female spectator and creator. If there is a ‘male gaze’ is there then also a definitive ‘female gaze?’ In continuing to consider gaze in these binarised ways, do we solidify a heteronormative system of control between the gaze and the object?
As a queer woman I began to ask myself how I looked and, more importantly as a maker, how was I representing people? As a woman who desires other women was I cutting them with a knife in the same way the male gaze does? In asking this question I have sought to see how theatre may help to articulate the complexities and slippery way in which this specific gaze operates.
There is much of this work, which considers fluidity; how a queer feminine gaze moves between the subject and object, seeking too to make the object subject. Perhaps in desiring we might also be able to see ourselves within the object of desire.
This performance draws on feminist psychoanalytic and cultural theory to reframe the gaze. It considers how we might represent another and give them subjectivity without denying desire. I use ‘queer feminine gaze’ to seek specificity and state my own positionality. This definition does not seek to enforce that aesthetics have a biological code but rather look at how discourse has shaped the way certain aesthetic qualities have been coded by gender. This performance draws on the research of other theatre practitioners to use what are traditionally considered ‘feminine’ aesthetics; fluidity, improvisation, affective theatre, unfixed and non-linear narratives to challenge the dominant, solid, masculine tropes of theatre.
This is Not About Lee Miller is about and not about my relationship to Lee Miller. It is also about my relationship to every woman I have desired, where Lee acts as a conduit for this exploration of gaze. She is a vessel to explore embodiment, the fluid relationship of seeing and seeing oneself within and the impossibility of ever knowing/owning. In trying to be closer to her eventually I become closer to myself.
I am hesitant to tell you too much about Lee. She will and won’t speak in this performance and she should rather for herself through her work, which you can find at: https://www.leemiller.co.uk
Dana would like to acknowledge that this showing was rehearsed and took place on the lands of the Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation who have been custodians of this land for thousands of years. She would like to acknowledge that this land was never ceded and pay her respects to Elders past, present and emerging.
This work was presented at VCA as a developmental showing. A lecture presentation of the work was also created for Small and Loud October, The Channel, Arts Centre Melbourne (2019)
As a queer woman I began to ask myself how I looked and, more importantly as a maker, how was I representing people? As a woman who desires other women was I cutting them with a knife in the same way the male gaze does? In asking this question I have sought to see how theatre may help to articulate the complexities and slippery way in which this specific gaze operates.
There is much of this work, which considers fluidity; how a queer feminine gaze moves between the subject and object, seeking too to make the object subject. Perhaps in desiring we might also be able to see ourselves within the object of desire.
This performance draws on feminist psychoanalytic and cultural theory to reframe the gaze. It considers how we might represent another and give them subjectivity without denying desire. I use ‘queer feminine gaze’ to seek specificity and state my own positionality. This definition does not seek to enforce that aesthetics have a biological code but rather look at how discourse has shaped the way certain aesthetic qualities have been coded by gender. This performance draws on the research of other theatre practitioners to use what are traditionally considered ‘feminine’ aesthetics; fluidity, improvisation, affective theatre, unfixed and non-linear narratives to challenge the dominant, solid, masculine tropes of theatre.
This is Not About Lee Miller is about and not about my relationship to Lee Miller. It is also about my relationship to every woman I have desired, where Lee acts as a conduit for this exploration of gaze. She is a vessel to explore embodiment, the fluid relationship of seeing and seeing oneself within and the impossibility of ever knowing/owning. In trying to be closer to her eventually I become closer to myself.
I am hesitant to tell you too much about Lee. She will and won’t speak in this performance and she should rather for herself through her work, which you can find at: https://www.leemiller.co.uk
Dana would like to acknowledge that this showing was rehearsed and took place on the lands of the Wurundjeri and Boon Wurrung peoples of the Kulin Nation who have been custodians of this land for thousands of years. She would like to acknowledge that this land was never ceded and pay her respects to Elders past, present and emerging.
This work was presented at VCA as a developmental showing. A lecture presentation of the work was also created for Small and Loud October, The Channel, Arts Centre Melbourne (2019)
Photography by Elizabeth Tanter, at VCA (2019)
