User:RebLAHIS/Feminist Performance Art

Body in Feminist Performance Art
The human body, in feminist performance, who performs or appears on stage, has becomes an evidence to speaks for herself/ itself. Anna Maria Giannini, author and artist of "Intimate Visibilities", who researches female body on video/ performance and installation. Giannini stated in her article that the notion of female body in performance art has contained "the private and intimacy...of the public arena" which "allowing the viewer to experience a sense of strangeness".

Examples of Female artists using their body
Regina José Galindo, a Guatemalan performance artist who specialises in body art. Galindo's female body works focus on two major representations: First, the representation of the 'excessive, carnivalized, grotesque and abject female body'; Second, on the 'female body that has been subjected to violence at a private and public level'. Galindo use body to explore "female sexuality, notions of feminine beauty, race or domestic and national violence". Editors of "Holy Terrors: Latin American Women Perform" (2003), has stated Galindo's body art as "politics of representation and the strategies of power written across the female body, which serves as both message and the vehicle". Galindo's body works explore the relationship between 'womanhood and patriarchy', as how Russo, M. (1994) has mentioned female body "as a model of normatively, the severe and penetrating moral, social and aesthetic judgement seem to converge upon the female body".

Karen Finley, a female performer who performing nude, by shocking her audiences with violent and sexual abusing stories. Within Finley's performance, she used to stand at the point as "victims of rape, child abuse, AIDS, domestic violence and racism". Finely is using her body and the nudity from her body performance to "speaking for other women who are unable to speak for themselves...". Finely's body as a medium to present as a 'site of oppression'. Though, the critique towards Finely's nudity performances as 'pornographic', Finely believes that a woman body can become an representative for all the bodies of all women who had/have/will be suffered from those oppression.

Dayna McLeod, a female, Montreal based performance and video artist, whose works associated with feminism, queer identity and sexuality topics.

Margaret Dragu

Diane Borsato

Yoko Ono's Cut Piece (1964) responds to gender violence
Yoko Ono's Cut Piece (1964) categorised as performance art, a piece where Ono sits in the centre of the stage by herself, wearing a formal suit. Ono's performance inviting audience to "cut a small piece" of her suit out with a pair of scissors given by Ono. Ono allowing interactions between her body and puts her female body as an object, which started the discussion on the 'loss of agency' on the action of 'touching' someone and the 'female nudity' under a public location. Yoko Ono describes Cut Piece (1964) in the first year she performed as "a test of her commitment to life as an artist...", which Ono's Cut Piece was not first implying the ideology to against violence on gender or presenting the piece with a feminism ideology. Ono performed the Cut Piece again in Paris - For World Peace, in September 2003. Ono's performance has then being interpreted as "an exploration of sadism/masochism and violence/victimisation". Also, the performance has been connected with the discussion on 'female body' and 'male gaze'. Ono has restated her thoughts afterwards on her performance in "against ageism, against racism, against sexism, and against violence" to the Routers News Agency. In Dolan's article "Make a Spectacle, Make a Difference" (2010), which stated that there are more women initiate into the playwrights and to perform on stage within recent twenty years. During the 70s, in the US, women started to promote theatre of women, in order to crack down the domination of men in the theatre. There are a rising numbers of women engage into playwright and perform on stage, similarly to Yoko Ono; the stage or the theatre becomes a medium to the women to "express their lives and politics" and to create "collectives". Yoko Ono's Cut Piece (1964), as a performance which against gender violence, either for men or women, rising the political problematic of gender inequality in theatre, which offers a new way for female to make changes on gender domination within performance art.

Male-gaze in performance triggered gender violence
Performance art was being a popular medium to express and to respond to the political unrest and the changing culture, since late 60s to 70s. Performance art has free the body, which allows the body being implied "sexual liberation and resistance to cultural constraints". Considering feminist performance, the 'object of gaze' and an 'object of desire' are the biggest concern in the theatre. Connected with Yoko Ono's Cut Piece (1964), the 'real gaze' from the male audience may not be seen through the third perspective, yet, we can perceive their actions, by seeing male audiences cutting off pieces of fabric from Ono's suit. There are scholars of feminism studies, has various of discussion towards 'male gaze' on female performances or theatres. Sue-Ellen Case, writer of the "Feminism and Theatre", who has suggested that the image of female performers would have been projected as 'courtesan' by the desire from male audience. Case here means that the desire of male audience, has motivate themselves to 'look' at the female performers as a 'sexual object'. Besides, Laura Mulvey, who suggested that under the gaze from male, women has become a 'passive object'. Other then that, Hov, Live, author of "The First Female Performers: Tumblers, Girls, and Mime Actresses", who suggested that 'male-gaze' violence is a matter which 'considered as universal' of all 'theatre and performance', as long as "real women participate in the actions presented for the audience".

References