Eo 1st draft

I am working on a short video piece that will feature myself taking a shower, borrowing visual tropes from the famous shower scene of the classic Hitchcock film Psycho. An attention will be directed to both the timing of the editing with this scene (around 10 jump cuts), combined with placing an emphasis on the shower curtain prop itself, that will have screen printed french text on it containing grammatical gender and associations to the female through language. The fact that the moon is feminine (la lune) has an impact on how we think of the moon, or the images that have been associated with the moon across history etc. The printed text should direct a viewer towards the mechanics of grammatical gender, looking at how it works combined with an act of female violence. Moreover, delve into the seductive elements of Janet Leigh’s character who is fetishised before her brutal death. The piece explores a potential gender bias at the root of language though looking at body parts that are strangely masculine in French: le vagin (the vagina), le sein (the breast). Also, perhaps surprisingly, both l'allaitement (breast-feeding) and l'accouchement (child birth). Le uterus,- A Uterus and Le medicin - The Doctor. The process I plan to take is primarily selecting the text, designing how it should be placed on the curtain, then screen printing it onto the surface. The language chosen can be playful, poetic, non-sensical even. The shower scene is further thinking about naked bodies, violence towards women and the depiction of female nudes and their place within historical subject matter of art and success within the art market. This idea relates to previous work I’ve done because it deals with texts surrounding the body or embodiment. In the past I have also written modern day socio-feminist fictions. I’ve been taking inspiration from attempts to change, depictions of women throughout history. And the gravitational pull of french feminist thought coinciding with my own attempts to learn french for two years from 2012-2014 when I was based in Paris. The work Looks to various Feminist incentives, and their attempts to change language or look at its relationship towards gender prominently through Simone de Beauvoir and Judith Butler. The shower curtain prop continues my methodologies of making objects with more that one aspect to them. These objects can be the birth of an argument or discussion, or serve as foils and/or nodes of various strands of thought. For me, they are in-between objects that have a fluidity and dual potential within their lifespan. I find curtains intriguing as they are a barrier, an in-between space via there ability to partition private communal space, be present within everyday cleansing rituals and shielding a naked body. I will take references from the recently translated book called Sphinx, by Anne Garréta, the only female member of the Oulipo. Its constraint is that it is a love affair between two characters, but their gender is never specified, an ambiguity which is very difficult to achieve, on account of the French grammar. In the same what that Woolf’s Orlando has deeply influenced my practice. Furthermore pay homage to Hélène Cixous as someone who foregrounds grammatical gender in her writing in French. In particular Rootprints (trans. Eric Prenowitz) which narrates her dream of an ant, normally feminine in French (une fourmi) but masculine in her dream (un fourmi).