I Carry You with Me: On Representation and the Bodily Event
Loading...
Date
2017
Authors
Couch, Chelsea
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Abstract
This paper explores the complexities of presenting an image of the body as well as a representation of the bodily
event. Central to this inquiry is an examination of the subject/object relationship (the perception of self as rooted in the thingness of the body) as well as the ways in which bodies occupy and navigate space. Further, this paper investigates the radicality of the object, examining its material thingness as a condition filled with subversive potential—advocating for a body’s thingness or observed objectness points to the subject’s origin from object and transforms cultural attempts at normalizing practices of identification.
Through a means of disidentification, or a de-/recoding to include disempowered identities, I am allowed through misrecognition the opportunity within my studio practice to subvert images and objects, approaching the self as a hybrid and fragmentary subject. I operate within a mode of representation that continually failed to reflect my image back to me—one of seeming completeness, reconciliation; of seeming stasis, fixity. Through the creation and duplication of both objects and images, my becoming is made visible and tangible however mutable it may be. I want to question with my creative work what happens when we insert ourselves into an image, further queering (exploring, transcending, transforming) the image. This paper is an examination of how my studio practice fits into this contemporary artistic, historical, and theoretical dialogue.
Description
46 pages