prooposal

Self Initiated Project: Identity in flux

PROPOSAL

The project explores the ideas of gender, gender roles through role playing. This reenactment
of situations from photographs taken by other artists or photographs of other artists will take
a documentary form of recording the performance
Photographs chosen for re photographing are all of females. Its an investigation of the
femininity and masculinity by using a male form (me) to reenact the female actions / poses /
roles.
The aim of this project is to question the mainstream ideas around gender roles, around the
ideas of femininity and masculinity. What does it mean to be feminine? What does it mean to
be masculine? The World Health Organization defines gender as the result of socially
constructed ideas about the behavior, actions, and roles a particular sex performs.
Intersections and crossing of the prescribed boundaries have no place in the arena of the
social construct of the term "gender".
The project will primarily photograph me performing / re-staging different situations, moments
from photographs taken by other artists or photographs of other artists. It will also record
moving image of the poses to create a hybrid between a still image and a video work. It will
predominantly be done using a digital camera but I will also attempt to shoot in film, b&w,
colour and polaroid. All video work will be done using digital camera.
Each shoot will then be edited using Lightroom and Photoshop to aesthetically resemble the
“original” image as close as possible.
The section of images for me to perform is a key fact in the success of this project. It will be
very important that the images make sense and they work within the idea for this body of
work. They have to be easily recognizable by the reader for this project to succeed.
I see the video work as a hybrid between moving and still image. It will capture me getting
into a position / posing for a photograph, standing still for a number of seconds and then
possibly leaving the frame or moving into a different position.

In relation to the theoretical background for this work I’m influenced by the following writings:

Gender Trouble by Judith Butler

Stereotyping: The Politics of Representation by Michael Pickering

Concepts Of Identity: Historical And Contemporary Images And Portraits Of Self And
Family by Katherine Hoffman

Media, gender and identity by David Gauntlett

Similar projects or ideas have been developed by artist already. The main references are:

Yasumasa Morimura

Aneta Grzeszykowska Untitled Film Stills, 2006

Sandro Miller Malkovich, Malkovich, Malkovich: Homage to Photographic Masters

Nikki Lee Projects

This project grew from my research into possible thesis subject, in the subject of gender and
identities.
For this module, with the time restrictions etc. I decided to focus on the performative nature of
gender and identity.
As I develop this project I plan to make a portfolio of 10 A3 size prints. While taking still
images I am also recording a moving image footage related to particular shoot.
It is my intention to try and develop this idea further and possibly edit the shoots to create an
installation On a number of separate screens a short video will play reconstruction a pose
from a image (as perviously described).
Selection of images I’m considering to reenact

Indicative images in visual dairy.