Kiki Smith

Kiki Smith
Kiki Smith, born in German in 1954, uses various media and materials to create her artwork. Since the beginning of her career in 1979, she has been using diverse material as sculptural medium like papier-mâché, wax, wood, fabric, glass, etc., material considered “feminine”. For Smith the use of material is connected to the dualism of the concept of the body as feminine and head as masculine in the Western culture, as well as the definition of nature and women as inferior.
Smith’s focus has been the body and how the body is a physical receptacle for knowledge, belief, and storytelling. According to Eleanor Heartney in her essay “Kiki Smith: A View from the Inside Out”, Smith rejects the Western tendency of privileging the vision over other senses. Over the course of her career, Smith has been moving from working about the inside of the body to the outside. In the 80’s her work concentrated on the organs, cells and other systems and now she sees the body as a landscape in which political and social issues take place. Her work states the condition of women. She has created work inspired in biblical and mythological figures changing their historic or mythology meaning.

Rosemary Betterton-An Intimate Distance: Women, Artists and the Body

An Intimate Distance: Women, Artists and the Body
Rosemary Betterton

In Chapter One of “An Intimate Distance: Women, Artists and the Body”, Betterton examines Suzanne Valadon’s “Self Portrait”, in which the artist, 66 years old, presents herself naked and without commiseration. Betterton points out that Valadon’s painting is” intimate”, and at the same time she upholds her body as “an object of representation”(p.7). According to Betterton, when an artist such as Valadon, looks at her representation, she completes that space between “self and others” (p.7). Betterton examines two extremes in the representation of the body - looking at the body, and the embodiment itself. She explains her interest in the analysis of the symbolism of distance and touch in women’s art and how the center of interest in Western art and science is looking. By looking, we establish a distance between the subject and the object. In contrast to Western art theory, feminist theory presents an alternative view of the way we think, see and talk about the body.

These alternatives include examining the “borderline between the biological and the social, the natural and the cultural”(p. 9). The author states that the way the body has been represented in culture and in language is at the core of feminist theory. She mentions the importance that feminist theory has made of the poststructuralist and psychoanalytic work of Foucault and Lacan to question the “notion of a coherent female subject.” (p. 9) Betterton points out that women artists have started to recreate the cultural meaning of the female body as a specifically female experience. Women artists were, in effect, reclaiming the cultural meaning of the female body. In the 1970’s, pornography was a catalyst for the discussion about the representation of the female body that contested the male view of the female body as only genitalia.

The author points out that the analysis of aesthetics was a point of debate in feminist theory in the 70’s. The deconstruction of the traditional representation of women’s body became a central point for women artists. Rejecting traditional art forms like painting, feminist artists turned to methods and genres that allowed them to deconstruct the image of the female such as text, performance, and photo. The author explains that deconstruction represents an important tool to analyze “cultural forms and women’s oppression”(p11), and points out that if women artists want to represent their bodies, that it should be out of the “male gaze frame”.

To define the relationship between looking and embodiment, Betterton uses a comparison between Roland Barthes who stated that the only possibility to see our body is through existing cultural codes, and Luce Irigaray who rejected the idea of the image of women as re-duplicating male gaze, and states that the relationship to the body and its representation has been the center of debate in feminist visual theory.
Back to Roland Barthes - the author shows other interpretations about the body in representation, in his essay, “The Grain of the Voice”. He suggests another way to see the body, as a relationship “based on looking and one based on other senses” (p.13). For Luce Irigaray, the look has been privileged over other senses.

In the section ”Social Bodies”, the author points out the tendency of Western culture to establish dichotomies. Women have been categorized as inferior and aligned with nature, different from the category of the white, male, middle class. Males have been defined as rational (the mind) and women as just the body. The body has been defined as a “binary term of difference”. The author states the difference between identity as a result of social discourse, and embodiment. According to her, modern feminism has responded to this position about the body in two ways: taking the liberal theory of equal rights, but leaving out specific status of women, and adopting sexual differences, and affirming the idea of nature as something positive, but not questioning “male rationality”(p.14).

In the last part of Chapter One, Betterton describes how feminist theory has defined the body as the point of “social and political inscription rather than giving a biological veracity”(p.15). In contrast, the author presents the feminist literature of science in a progressive level in the deconstructive analysis of the sexual difference, by presenting the interaction of cultural, and biological parts in the female body.

Marina Abramovic

Marina Abramovic
Abramovic is a Yugoslavian performance artist from who since1965 has used her body as the medium to explore personal experiences of pain, power, abuse, relationship and punishment. In her performance she places her body as the object and the subject. According to Sue Scott in her essay “Marina Abramovic: Between Life and Death”, the violence and self abuse the artist imposed on her own body had been always in her life. The artist defines her performances not as feminist body art. She said, “When feminism became an issue, I was in Yugoslavia. In Yugoslavia women were partisans, absolutely in power…I never felt that I didn’t have things because I was a woman.” Her work, full of symbolism, is focused on the area between the body and the mind.
The artist uses the performance as a medium, using knives, fire, animals, objects, and the most important element: her body.
References
Marina Abromovic’s Performance: Stresses on the Body and Psych in Installation Art. By: Turim, Maureen. Camera Obscura, Dec2003, Vol. 18 Issue 54, p98-117, 20p.
Scott, Sue. “Marina Abramovic : Between Life and Death: After the Revolution Women Who Transforms Contemporary Art, Prestel Press, 2007.

Valie Export

In 1967, Waltraud Hollinger changed her name to Valie Export, adopting a new identity that was different from one associated with a father or husband, and at the same time, she created a brand name of her identity as an artist. Export is one of the first artists to use her own body as the central artistic tool. She deconstructs her own body as a way to explore identity and society, as well as to explore image and representation. A second important expression in Export’s work is the concept of “body configurations” - the artist uses her body as a symbol or sign in nature or architecture as a way to show how we the body is an extension of the architecture as well as a contrast, and as a way to separate itself from “ideological environment”.

Export has used images of herself through performance to create her photographic and film work that explore the image and its representation. In the process of creation, her body is transformed from object to active subject. Many times the artist re-uses the images with the intention of change the meaning.

Export is one of the most prolific media artists; she uses different media such as her own body, video, film, performance, photo, and drawing. Her conceptual work in photography and film has become important to the history of this art period.


References:
Alberro Alexander. Artforum International, Valie Export, April 01.
Markus Hallensleben. Importing Valie Export: Corporeal Topographies in Contemporary Austrian Body Art, Modern Austrian Literature, Vol. 42, No. 3, University of British Columbia. 2009.
Sally O’Reilly. Valie Export, Art Monthly, Vol. 28.
David Stromberg. A Self-Created Personality. July 24, 2009.

Orlan-Feminist Artist

Orlan
Orland is a French artist whose work is about the body, and she uses her own body as a medium to analyze both female stereotypes and the concept of female beauty as something imposed. As many feminist artists, Orlan has not used traditional media like painting or sculpture; instead, she has been using alternative visual media to represent her body. Orlan uses plastic surgery as a medium to explore the idea of beauty in different personages from the Renaissance. The artist has created several performances in which a medical team carries out plastic surgery on the body, and most of the time on the face of the artist. Orland has performed nine plastic surgeries - each one has been video transmitted live to different galleries and museums like the Pompidou in Paris. In each of these performances, the audience was able to ask her questions through a video conference about the performance and interact with her at the same time that the surgery was taking place. The post-surgical (painful) period was an important part of the performance. Orlan incorporates pain as an important part of this performance to emphasize the lengths that women will go through to fit themselves into the male definition of beauty.
In the scope of her work, Orlan has used various media like video, video conference, digital photo, the Internet, and plastic surgery.
References
Review/Art; Surgical Sculpture: The Body as Costume
Smith, Roberta. New York Times, New York, N.Y., Dec 17, 1993. p. C.31.

Flesh & Feminism: Abstract (Summary)
Carey Lovelace. Ms. Arlington: Spring 2004. Vol.14, pp. 1 – 65.
Wilson, Stephen. Information Arts: Intersections of Art, Science, and Technology: MIT Press, 2002.

Wilson,Stephen. Information Arts, Intersections of Art, Science and Technology

Information Arts, Intersections of Art, Science and Technology
Stephen Wilson
In Chapter 2, “Biology, Microbiology, Animals and Plants, Ecology, and Medicine and the Body”, the author describes how biology has been a source of attention from artists since the Renaissance. In this chapter, the author describes the areas of biological research in the U.S. through the National Science Foundation. The NSF’s biology department, according to the author, is divided in four areas such as: biological infrastructure, environmental biology, integrative biology and neuroscience, and molecular and cellular bioscience. In addition, the NSF develops different projects such as: human genomic project, biodiversity studies, and microbial research. The author gives special importance to a workshop developed by NSF called “Impact of Emerging Technologies on the Biological Science”, in which the NSF “identified technologies that would shape the future of biological research and ultimately intervention”(p.56). The author summarizes these technologies as: bioinformatics (using a computer for analysis and data), computational biology (use of computers for research purposes), functional imagining of the chemical and molecular dynamics of life (spectroscopy and fluorescence), transformation and transient expression technologies (technology for the research of DNA), nanotechnology (to merge mechanical and biosensors). The author explains that some of these areas represent a good terrain for artistic exploration in biology and the body, although there are limitations imposed by researchers and moral standards in the development of these complex projects (bioethics). However, artists exploring these areas “can serve a useful function by being aware of the full range of research that may be culturally significant in the future”(p.59).

In this section, the author describes research focusing on the senses, and he emphasizes the importance of this scope of research for information technology, with the intention to design computers (sensors) and the possibility of developing software capable of performing these sense processes. This area, according to Wilson, represents a great opportunity for artists to explore; however, the artistic intervention in this area has been limited.

In the section “Theoretical Perspectives on Biology and the Body”, the author states the importance of questioning the established concepts and methodologies in biological research. The cultural theory demands a deep analysis of the ideology of science. He writes, “Deconstruct all aspects of life to understand how text, image, and narrative work to produce and reinforce behavior and ideology”(p.72).

In “Rethinking the Body and Medicine”, the author describes the interest of artists in the body as a subject matter. Later he refers to the text “Making of the Modern Body” in which the authors Catherine Gallagher and Thomas Walter Laqueur analyses the different ways the body has been explored and “represented”(p.79), in different cultural circumstances. One of the authors notes that there are several interpretations of the body depending of the point of view of analysis. The author refers to Michel Foucault as somebody who had great importance in the analysis of the body. The author notes that for Foucault “the body is the ultimate site of political and ideological control, surveillance and regulation”(p.80). And explains that Foucault claims that the body has been the center of the imposition of power.

The author describes how cultural theory analyses different concepts and technologies about the merging between the body and mechanical technology. He presents as an example the human genome as some kind of mechanization and the consequent reactions of the idea of seeing the body as a system able to be scanned or decoded in the computer and with this creating a space of power and control. To illustrate this point, the author refers to Donna Haraway’s “Cyborg Manifesto” and he writes, “Haraway analyzes science’s fascination with domination and control. With the new technology it is possible to have access to images inside the body” and this, according to Wildon, represents a great opportunity for the artist, and that in the majority of cases, the artists use the same technology that the researchers use. But it is not just important to use the same technology - artists should use the deconstructive process to analyze science and technology’s concepts. Science and technology are defined by culture, and here the author claims that “the more information artists have about the research and its contexts, the more adequately they can respond”(p.88).

In the section “Impact on Cultural Frameworks”, the author explains how scientific research impacts “general cultural discourse”(p.89), and gives an example of the social response to the birth control pill, and how it changed important sexual and social behavior. These social reactions represent a great “advantage of artists”, since “artists are cultural producers”(p.89). In this section the author presents several artists who actually are working with different materials like chromosomes and genes. One of them is Suzanne Anker, who creates installations using chromosomes. In her work “Chromosome Chart of Suzanne Anker”, she works with her DNA to create a representation of herself using the print materials of the chromosomes. Other artists mentioned by the author in this section are Susan Alexjander and Dave Dareamer, who create music using their own DNA. Gail Wight creates work about scientific experiments. Using the same scientific resources, she creates installations, which analyze the social and moral involvements of scientific experiments.

In the section “Bodies, Technology, and Theory”, the author explains that the body has been used by artists in different areas, and, in some cases, the body itself is the principal form of expression, and in other cases it is the principal theme of the expression. Here the author gives us an example of video and film that regularly explore different expressions giving the opportunity to change our perception over “gender and identity”(p149). The author explains how scientific, medical and technological research has converted the body as the center of attention for “cultural discourse and artistic experimentation”(p149). The author refers to the body as something we all know and something we experiment with every day. However, the author explains, many of the characteristics that define us or feelings we perceive are “socially constructed”(p.149).

In the section “Extropian and Post-Human Approaches”, Wilson points out that some groups (Extropian and Post-Human) believe that we should be experimenting more and using the results of scientific and technological research, for example plastic surgery, artificial implantations, etc. However, the author warns us that there are other sectors of this movement that we need to be careful of in the use of new technology. The author points out that “for artists, the impact of the technologies on identity and concepts of self are of prime concern”(p.156).

In the section “Artist’s Experiments with Technological Stimulation”, the authors describe a great number of artists investigating through technology the body and its cultural discourse. In the first place the author points out an Australian artist, Stella, who merges the body and technology to play with the idea of the “post-human”, the super-powerful human, and the decadence of the human body.

Marcel Attunes Roca uses the computer as a tool to manipulate his face and other parts of the body - with the help of an audience - to control his pain or pleasure. He has several projects, among them one named Phantom Body, which examines the idea of missing organs.

Stahl Stenslie and Kirk Woolford, are exploring different functions of the body in “contemporary culture”(p.164). In the cyberSM project they use a special suit with sensors that the audience can manipulate to simulate touch. Another artist working with the same technology, and with interest in exploring the body are: Knut Mork, Kate Pendry, Stahl Stenslie, and Marius Watz. One of their projects consisted of wearing a bodysuit with sixteen sensors in different parts, and the user of the suit has, then, the feeling of being touched, and with the use of goggles the user can see virtual images representing the people they are touching.

Orlan is a French artist using plastic surgery as a medium to explore identity, as well as to show the relationship between the inside and outside.
In the section of “Body Modification”, the author mentions other artists like: Fakir Musafar, who bases his work on the idea that our body is ours, and rejects the imposition and control of the” Judeo-Christian body programming and emotional conditioning”(p.176). He believes that technology has been a determining factor for the body modification movement.

Between other artists included in this section are: Peras Kaul, working with “ 3-d words that are navigated by brainwaves”(p.182). David Rosenboom, working with nerves and music. Catherine Richards works with different technology, and the artist explores parts of the body, and at the same time challenges the possibilities of the technology.
In the section “The Psychological Processes of Perception, Cognition, Appreciation, and Creativity”, the author refers to artists working on different functions like Masayuki Towata and Yasuaki Matsumoto, who are interested in exploring senses. Paul Vanouse, through his project “A Corpus of Knowledge on the Rationalized Subject”, uses a bar-code reader, and invites people to scan parts of the body of a live model, localizing internal organs.

In the last part of this chapter, the author makes a brief review of other artists working with 3-D technologies, the concept of death, and the use of MRI and PET.