FKW // Zeitschrift für Geschlechterforschung und visuelle Kultur
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Von humanimals, Einhörnern und Meerjungfrauen in Between the waves: A fable in five chapters – Re-aktualisierung von Weiblichkeitsmetaphern als subversive Praxis?!
Get PDFThis paper analyses Between the waves, a 5-channel-video-installation produced in 2012 by the indian artist Tejal Shah. Channel 1, A fable in 5 chapters, presents a poetic, heterotopic and very sensual world within which Shah places their humanimals, half woman*, half unicorn. Multiple historic and mythological references are woven into the narrative: Most obvious is the reference to Rebecca Horns Einhorn which refers to Frida Kahlos Die gebrochene Säule. These references are the base for the following questions: In which way does Shah develop a performative theory which embodies the strategy of Revolving Histories? What role does artistic and cultural Sisterhood play? What influence does the situated knowledge of the viewer have to get access to the video-installation? Alongside the idea of Freuds Prothesengott this paper analyses the moving moments of the acting of the humanimals to formulate a critic against a phallocentric sexuality and a heteronormative embodiment
"Alle alle starben […] an meiner Geschlechtslosigkeit, die doch alle Geschlechter in sich hat". Eine queer-feministische Spurensuche zu Anita Berbers tänzerischem Werk der 1920er-Jahre
Get PDFThe dancer and artist Anita Berber (1899–1928) became an icon of the rural 1920s in Berlin; her dances about death, addiction and gender roles became a scandal. It was the time of modern dance that broke with all previous conventions. Anita Berber went even further and, even within these upheavals, extremely challenged her audience's moral standards and viewing habits: Long before the times of performance art, Anita Berber masturbated on stage, made menstrual blood the central motif of one of her pieces and wrote poems with her gay dance partner Sebastian Droste which include ideas of what we call queer today
Textil transportiert. Gülsün Karamustafas Courier als Verhandlungsort politischer Sichtbarkeit
Get PDFWith Courier (1991) the Turkish artist Gülsün Karamustafa created a textile work of art, that gives the possibility of acknowledging visibility in the field of migration. The visibility of migration is a sensitive issue, induced by medial representation and the caused connotation of the other. In the field of art one chance of breaking with this handed down views is the use of textiles. The understanding of the material as a medium of memory, constitutes its function as a surrogate for the human body – approachable for a variety of viewers, due to their own experience of the material. Through this mechanism, the visualization of migrants without explicit representation of bodies opens the possibility of identification and thus appreciation. On this basis, Karamustafa’s work further develops the image of an active individual, appropriating the subversive historico-cultural technique of stitching. A crucial strength of the artwork develops from its immanent oscillation between historical depth and associative openness in the present
Escaping the Echo Chamber: Perspectives on Immigrant Representations in the Exhibition Space
Get PDFAs a growing number of artists and curators have been using their works to express concern regarding the renewed discourse on migration in Europe, representations of migrant people have become more frequent in cultural institutions. The focus put on the figure of the migrant however raises some questions, notably concerning the ethics of representation. Indeed, while a strong focus is put on individual testimonies, the narrativisation of migrants’ experiences simultaneously runs the risk of invisibilising the broader contemporary border control systems, central to the functioning of migrations today. Works designed to produce empathetic reactions in the viewer through testimonies might paradoxically contribute to the silencing of migrants’ claims, while also failing to address the specific bureaucratic processes used by migratory control systems, at play in the making of what news media have been calling the ‘refugee crisis’ since 2015. In order to discuss and question current issues with the ways migrations tend to be represented, as well as possibilities for different representations, this paper will analyze and compare two artworks: Libia Castro and Olafur Olafsson’s audio sculpture Bosbolobosbocoand Lawrence Abu Hamdan’s Conflicted Phonemes, displayed at the 2016 exhibition Voices Outside the Echo Chamber: Questioning Myths, Facts and Framings of Migration, at the Framer Framed Gallery in Amsterdam in 2016. As the two works present radically different perspectives on the representation of migrations and migrant people, this article will propose a critical understanding of the different strategies they adopt, and how such strategies might impact social praxis.
