The Ecofeminist Lens

Home , Ecofeminist art, Ecological art, Environmental art, Feminist art movement, Feminist history, Mary Beth Edelson

The Ecofeminist Lens:

Nature, Technology & the Female Body in Lens-based Art

Nikki Zoë Omes

S2103605

Master’s Thesis

Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University

MA Media Studies, Film & Photographic Studies

Supervisor: Helen Westgeest

Second Reader: Eliza Steinbock

14 August 2019

21,213 words

Contact: [email protected]

Cover page collage created by writer.

Table of Contents

Introduction 3

Chapter 1: Photographic Transitions in Representing the Human-Nature Relation 10 1.1. From Documentary to Conceptual: Ana Mendieta’s Land Art 11

1.2. From Painterly to Photographic: The Female Nude in Nature 17

Chapter 2: The Expanding Moving Image of the Female Body in Nature 27 2.1. From Outside to Inside: Ana Mendieta’s Films in the Museum 28

2.2. From Temporal to Spatial: Pipilotti Rist’s Pixel Forest as Media Ecology 35

Chapter 3: An Affective Turn Towards the Non-human/Female Body 42 3.1. From Passive Spectator to Active Material: The Female Corporeal Experience 43

3.2. From Iconic to Immanent: The Goddess in Movement 49

Conclusion 59

Works Cited 61

Illustrations 68

Introduction

I decided that for the images to have magic qualities I had to work directly with nature.

I had to go to the source of life, to mother earth (Mendieta 70).

Ana Mendieta (1948-1985) was a multimedia artist whose oeuvre sparked my interest into researching the intersection between lens-based art and ecofeminism.1 Mendieta called her interventions with the land “earth-body works,” which defy categorization and instead live on within several discourses such as performance art, conceptual art, photography and film. While her photography practice allowed her to work “outside the museum walls and beyond category and convention” (Walker 24), Mendieta’s process was like a sculptor working with the land as her clay (Cecilia). As an artist who worked directly with nature and was active during the brink of the ecofeminist movement, many scholars associate her work with ecofeminism and goddess feminism.2 But what is ecofeminism?

Francoise d’Eaubonne was the first to use the term “ecofeminism,” an abbreviation for ecological feminism, in 1974. As the word suggests, the movement brings together feminist and ecological concerns and sees a connection between the domination of nature and the subordination of women. Being an activist, Eaubonne believed not only that the liberation of women was tied to the liberation of nature, but also that ecofeminism should be

“anti-theory, anti-science, [and] anti-rational” (qtd. in Glazebrook 20) (Gersdorf 213).

However, the responsibility to challenge and critique the prevailing patriarchal traditions also lies in academia. One of the first and most influential ecofeminist literary critics, Patrick

Murphy stated that, “any ethically based criticism [...] is a type of intervention, and therefore can function as a form of activism and certainly a method of encouraging others to become activists” (qtd. in Claaren et al. 106). Moreover, the systems of domination that ecofeminism seeks to expose continue to be perpetuated and justified not only in politics and the media,

1 Mendieta’s work is often analyzed with regard to her biography, having immigrated from Cuba to the United

States of America as a child without her parents. Her tragic and controversial death at the age of 36 - some believe she was murdered by her then-husband and famous sculptor Carl Andre - often overshadows the thematic and art historical significance of her work. For this reason, I solely focus on Mendieta’s art (practices) in this thesis. 2 Goddess feminism is a movement closely tied to ecofeminism that bases spirituality in female divinities. The significance of goddess symbolism in lens-based art will be elaborated upon in sections 1.2 and 3.2 of this thesis.

“but also less obvious [places], like the academy, intellectual community, avant-garde artistic practices and radical theories - especially in feminism” (de Lauretis 3).3

Thus, ecofeminism penetrated the academic sphere, where theorists sought to challenge the permeating male perspective in environmental disciplines. Deep ecology, for instance, is a branch of environmental philosophy that addresses the interconnectedness of humans and nature. Ecofeminism seconds this notion, but adds that patriarchy and capitalism - not only in Western culture - are to blame for the anthropocentrism that dominates society.4 Instead of ignoring difference, ecofeminists address the multiplicity of perspectives towards the environment (Selam 81). As Irene Diamond and Feman Orenstein write in Reweaving the World: The Emergence of Ecofeminism (1990), life should be considered as, “lived awareness that we experience in relation to particular beings as well as the larger whole” (137). Although the domination of nature and women are central concerns, ecofeminism is an intersectional branch of feminism that considers interconnections between all systems of domination. Karen J. Warren, in Ecological Feminism (1994), calls these the “isms of domination” (2), amongst which are sexism, racism, classism, hetereosexism, and ethnocentrism.5

This thesis, however, will focus on the core of ecofeminism, exploring how the value dualism between nature and humans is conceptually tied to the value dualism between man and woman. Art theorist Suzann Boettger outlines this connection as forth:

Traditional archetypes of “woman” associate her with “nature” conceived of as

capricious and irrational . . . in contrast to the identification of masculine qualities

with things “manmade”: aspects of culture that are reasoned, or socially mediated.

The latter have been valued more highly because they are constructed intentionally

and are further removed from primal nature (253).

3 Feminist scholar Teresa de Lauretis was referring to the continuous social construction of gender in this sentence, but her argument can also be applied to other culturally ingrained notions and hierarchies that remain invisible in many fields.

4 Val Plumwood was a key player in ecofeminism but also in the development of “ecosophy,” meaning the philosophy of ecological harmony, which was first conceptualized in the nineties by post-structuralist Félix

Guattari and deep ecologist Arne Næss. Her book Feminism and the Mastery of Nature (1993) is a philosophical account of ecofeminism and its relation to other feminist and ecologist theories.

5 María Mies & Vandana Shiva reflect upon the more political rather than strictly philosophical side of ecofeminism and how these “isms of domination” function in real situations, reflecting upon interviews with women about environmental devastation in Ecofeminism (1993).

Warren calls these differences between what is considered “masculine” and “feminine” in

Western culture as value dualisms - human/nature, man/woman, mind/body, reason/emotion

- that function to keep the systems of domination intact (2).6 Art is then also traditionally considered as something “manmade,” where men create order out of the chaos of the earth or their female model/muse.7 Warren suggests that, “a less colonizing approach to nature does not involve denying human reason or human difference but rather ceasing to treat reason as the basis of superiority and domination” (68).

The discipline of ecofeminism faced critique for its sometimes essentialist view of the woman-nature relation - believing there is some essential connection between women and nature that men do not have - and universal generalizations of femininity and female experience. (Post-)structuralist feminists wanted to instead liberate women from the connection to nature, since it distanced them more from the cultural and scientific realm dominated by men. Feminist theorist Simone de Beauvoir for example, thought women needed to become autonomous subjects free from the associations of nature. Yet, in the same text, The Second Sex (1952), Beauvoir contends that both women and nature are seen as ‘other’ in the patriarchal order (114). The fact that this was written in the fifties suggest that there was already a need for deeper ecofeminist analysis within earlier feminist discourse.

Although the aim of ecofeminism was to research why cultural dualisms exist and how they function, its dismissal in the 1990s led to an outright rejection of the term ‘ecofeminism’ by most scholars entering the 2000s.

Currently, however, ecofeminism is experiencing somewhat of a resurgence. In

“Ecofeminism Revisited: Rejecting Essentialism and Re-placing Species in a Material

Feminist Environmentalism” (2011), Greta Gaard pleads for a “new ecofeminism” (44) that embraces its history but is simultaneously critical of its earlier pitfalls.8 Even though the scepticism about ecofeminism persists, the field continues to expand, being linked to

6 Ecofeminism has been critiqued as generalizing that the woman-nature relation is a global phenomenon, since many Eastern cultures have a very different cultural conception of women and nature. It is therefore necessary to specify that these modes of thinking are specific to Western culture.

7 For example, the earth is “ordered” by landscape painters romanticising its wilderness and figurative painters for instance historically censor and conceal women’s bodies.

8 This “new ecofeminism” takes the form of a “critical ecofeminism,” “anthropocene ecofeminism” and

“posthumanist anticolonial ecofeminism” in Gaard’s 2017 book.

different disciplines such as queer theory and materialism.9 The editor’s introduction by

Margarita Estévez-Saá and María Jésus Lorenzo-Modia, published in Women’s Studies in 2018, outlines the contemporary debates on ecofeminism(s) and argues for a merging of ethics and aesthetics in order to encourage perspectives of ‘eco-caring’ (21). Estévez-Saá and

Lorenzo-Modia discuss and include other essays on ecofeminist literature in the journal in an effort to “enhance the application of ecofeminist ethics to the realm of aesthetics” (140).

Ecocriticism, a term introduced in 1978, is synonymous with ecofeminism and is often used to analyze novels and poetry (Estévez-Saá & Lorenzo-Modia 132). More recent ecocritical analysis, however, has been based on film.10 What literature and cinema have in common is that they are primarily narrative-based, and thus make for more obviously applicable formats to analyze through an ethical lens. The analyses are often solely focused on aspects of narrative and characterization, instead of the formalist or aesthetic choices by the author or director. But these choices prove crucial, considering the poststructuralist notion of the non-transparent, biased, and inevitably subjective nature of words and images

(Estévez-Saá & Lorenzo-Modia 15). Amanda Boetzkes shows in The Ethics of Earth Art (2010) that ecocriticism can delve into the visual practices of art whilst simultaneously considering ecological ethics.11 Boetzkes’ case studies are what she calls “contemporary earth art,” which are works of art from any media that contemplate nature and/or the relationship between humans and nature (3).

Although a handful of artists were specifically associated with ecofeminism in the seventies, the label has remained “eco-art,” “environmental art,” or Boetzkes’ “earth art” instead of “ecofeminist art”. In 1996, the Women Eco Artists Dialogue (WEAD) was created as a response to the growing attention to female artists working with the environment.

Although the WEAD includes artists working with “electronic media” in their database, scholars tend to associate media like landscape art and sculpture with ecofeminism. In 2003,

9 Lee & Dow’s “Queering Ecological Feminism: Erotophobia, Commodification, Art, and Lesbian Identity”

(2001) and Mellor’s “Feminism and Enviromental Ethics: A Material Perspective” (2000) are examples of this expansion of ecofeminism.

10 Monani & Cubitt’s Ecocinema Theory and Practice (2012) and Marchessault, Cubitt & Malina’s Ecstatic Worlds: Media, Utopias, Ecologies (2017) for example. 11 Andrew Patrizio calls for a more eco-conscious rendering of art history and future art practices in his The Ecological Eye: Assembling an Ecocritical Art History (2019).

Gloria Feman Orenstein categorized “ecofeminist artists of the new millennium,” as “artists

[who] tend to focus on healing the damage through direct, hands-on, aesthetic and scientific collaborations with the earth herself” (104). “The Artistic Progressions of Ecofeminism: The Changing Focus of Women in Environmental Art” (2011) by Jade Wildly charts two different kinds of ecofeminist art practices, where “Cultural Ecofeminism incorporates symbology, drawing on religious and mythical iconography, while Social Ecofeminism incorporates environmental activism and action (55). Wildy concludes that from approximately the 1990s onwards, women in environmental art moved away from the cultural feminist notions of

“earth-mother symbolism” (64) towards more social ecofeminist interventions.

However, I find that cultural ecofeminism is in the midst of a reformation, where contemporary female artists are avidly exploring the relation between women and nature through symbolism and philosophy. To name some examples of artists working with lens-based media: Melanie Bonajo explores the changing relationship between humans, nature and spirituality (figure 1.1), Sheba Chhachhi examines the politics of nature’s destruction and how women are affected by it (fig. 1.2), and Shana Moulton expresses contemporary ecological anxiety through her filmic alter-ego Cynthia (fig. 1.3). I will be discussing similar art in this thesis, where the connection to ecofeminism may not be intentional by the artist, but communicates shared ideas and imagery to that of ecofeminism.

My main objective is to uncover the role of lens-based media in artistic expressions of ecofeminist philosophy and therefore develop a gender-aware ecocriticism of lens-based art.

I will call this “the ecofeminist lens,” which I will apply to my analysis of lens-based art. Since it would be reductive to claim that artworks can only be perceived as ecofeminist, I emphasize that these are ecofeminist readings of artworks, which could thus also be read in other ways. The aim of producing an ecofeminist lens is therefore not to state that these artworks are inherently ecofeminist, but to explore how an ecofeminist philosophy can be identified and how this is expressed, visualised and enhanced through the choice of lens-based media.

The umbrella term “lens-based media” includes film, animation, photography, and video - in short, art forms that revolve around the lens for their making. Since lens-based art

is highly dependent on modern technologies, this focus provides chances to reflect upon the tension between technology and nature. Although it may seem as though ecofeminists would like to return to a ‘natural’ life before technology, many do not oppose technology but think it should be put towards more positive uses that do not harm the environment (Selam 82).

Jane Wildly describes the position of ecofeminism within the era of the Anthropocene12:

While there are varying degrees of opinion within Ecofeminism, the close link

between humanity and nature is a common thread. It is considered that with the

advent of scientific and technological developments, the human race has become

separated from nature. This divorce from nature, as a core element of the human

condition, has resulted in what can be described as soullessness and emptiness, a lost

connection rendering the extensions of the spirit, life, creativity and emotion

meaningless and dead. While this is significant for all humanity, ecofeminists

consider it more poignant for women, critiquing the patriarchal view of the

environment (55).

It is precisely this “lost connection” to nature that artists attempt to revive in audiences by injecting new meaning into themes of “the spirit, life, creativity and emotion” that are so intertwined with our experience of and within nature. So what role can lens-based media play in reviving the connection between humans and nature? And how is the relationship between the female body and nature expressed using lens-based art?

To answer these questions, I will discuss three main topics that are already established within media studies - photographic representation (chapter 1), the moving image in the museum (chapter 2) and the affective turn (chapter 3). I have chosen these topics on the basis of their conceptual connection to ecofeminism. Each chapter is dedicated to one of these themes and proposes two transitions or changes in perspective that occurred in relation to this theme. This structure allows for the arguments to be based upon aesthetic and thematic transitions, using lens-based art by female artists as supportive case studies. It also traces the growing possibilities of visual expression using lens-based media - from being limited to the rectangular frame in photography and film (sections 1.1-2.1) to the potential of

12 Spanning from about 1900 to present, the Anthropocene has been classified by scientists as the first time humankind has had such an irreducible effect upon nature.

multi-channel, multimedia and web-based manifestations of the moving image (sections

2.2-3.2).

This thesis will focus on exploring how the choice of a lens-based medium affects the expression of ecofeminist notions and not the other way around. For this reason, the chapters and sections revolve around concepts in media studies and not ecofeminism. Some theories that will be central to this thesis are Susan Sontag & Roland Barthes’ notions of trace and time in photography; George Baker’s formation of the expanded field of photography; Walter Benjamin’s different conceptions of aura in photography and film;

Thomas Elsaesser’s idea of “ecological time” in the moving image; and Pepita Hesselberth’s concept of the “presence-effect” of film.

Chapter 1 questions if and how photography can add a conceptual layer of meaning to representing the human-nature relation. In section 1.1, I will argue that photography played a significant role in the land art movement - especially for Mendieta’s Silueta - not just documentarily but also conceptually. Section 1.2 will then focus more on the relationship between the female body and nature in photographic representation, asserting that the tradition of the nude in nature has changed due to the feminist movement in art in the seventies.

Turning towards the moving image in chapter 2, I will ask how its time-based or space-based presentation in the museum affects the expression of ecofeminism. In section

2.1, I continue my interest in Mendieta’s oeuvre in order to contrast the effects of photography discussed in section 1.1 with those of film. An exhibition by Pipilotti Rist provides the basis for section 2.2, to discover the possibilities the spatialization of video art gives for an ecofeminist conception of media ecology.

Chapter 3 moves towards the discussion on affectivity. Considering the significance of the visitor’s body and the artwork’s materiality, I attempt to find out how lens-based media is used to express the female body and its experience. Section 3.1 repositions the debate from section 2.2 - about the presence of the moving image in time vs. space - into affect theory. Lastly, section 3.2 will revisit the figure of the goddess and how her image can be reevaluated through lens-based art.

Chapter 1

Photographic Transitions in Representing the Human-Nature Relation

The issue of representation in photography is important, since photography is associated with the ‘real’ - the documentary. As a photograph frames an object or subject, it affects our perception of that object or subject. However, the role of photography is often overlooked in art where the land is the main medium. Hence my question: what conceptual value does the use of photography add to representations of the human-nature relation?

In this chapter, the relationship between humans and nature will serve as the overarching theme within which to consider how specific female artists challenge the conventions of photographic form and aesthetics. In section 1.1, the documentary form will be considered, where it is proposed that the photography of land art is often not merely documentary but also conceptual. Due to its ecological interventions and reflection on the relationship between humans and nature, the land art movement has close ties to ecofeminism. As both movements emerged around the same time period, it is a good place to begin this thesis, to explore how the human-nature relation is represented and challenged as well as to investigate the role of female artists and photography as a medium. Robert

Smithson’s notion of ‘non-site’ and George Baker’s take on the series will allow for a closer look into the role of photography in the land art of Ana Mendieta.

Section 1.2 will focus on the representation of the female nude in nature, charting a transition from pictorialism to modern photography by female artists. Feminist theories of the male gaze and ecofeminist conceptions of essentialism will be discussed in relation to female photographers from the seventies. Goddess feminism will be explored through the work of Mary Beth Edelson while Walter Benjamin’s idea of the aura in photography will be connected to depictions of the goddess of Venus. Lastly, David William Foster’s perspective of Laura Aguilar’s self-portraiture will shed light upon the role of the environment in the nude in nature.

1.1. From Documentary to Conceptual: Ana Mendieta’s Land Art

Amanda Boetzkes claims in The Ethics of Earth Art (2010) that, “nature exceeds the scope of human knowledge and systems of representation” (3). Central to humankind is our curiosity and eagerness for knowledge. In the process of collecting knowledge, humans categorize and frame information to make sense of it. Documentary photography, like science and technology, is a tool to frame or focus on a particular subject to gain an understanding of it.

Nature photography for example, aims to precisely document the details of nature, sometimes making it seem as though humans have the power to stop the earth in its tracks - to control it, mark it, and understand it. Documentary photography is at the centre of the human perception and attitude towards nature, since we still associate truth with documentary. Although humans want to know and grasp everything, what Boetzkes suggests is that nature is too complex to be limited by our modes of representation. Although documentary photographers have ‘captured’ nature in a myriad of ways, controlling the subject’s meaning and perception, the earth ultimately resists representation.

Boetzkes explores how art can make us aware of these limited systems of representation, “by forging an aesthetic awareness of how nature exceeds these discourses and representations” (2). In so doing, she creates the broader notion of earth art, which is usually limited to an association with the land art13 movement. She suggests that ecologically conscious art was also borne out of other art movements from the sixties and seventies, such as performance art and conceptual art. Something that these movements have in common is their ephemerality, due to which many artworks only continue to exist through documentation and thus depend on photography (Zucker & Harris). To what extent can the photographic documentations of land art be considered for their own artistic merit, aesthetic significance, and contribution to new conceptual meanings?

The possibility of photography having an artistic rather than merely documentary role in land art will be uncovered by firstly examining the role of photography in one of the most famous works of land art - Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty. Smithson’s concept of

13 “Land art” is an abbreviation for the term “landscape art”.

non-site will be discussed and tested with regard to Mendieta’s Silueta series. The ephemeral nature of this series will allow for a reflection upon photographic notions of absence, trace, and death. Lastly, Silueta will be revisited in light of George Baker’s viewpoint on narrative and stasis in photography.

The land art movement draws attention to the boundaries of documentary photography and the possibilities for a conceptual approach to documenting interventions with the landscape.

The movement began in the 1960s and, according to art historian Marilyn Stokstad, “sought to take art back to nature and out of the marketplace” (1144). Land artists wanted to escape the confines of the museum institution and commerciality of the art world, but were often brought back to art institutions in the form of documentation. Being site-specific, the artworks cannot travel and sometimes disappear, fading back into nature.14 Others impose themselves upon the earth, disrupting the environment or changing the landscape for several years.15 No matter the shape or duration of the land artwork however, photography is central to not only documenting the work, but doing so in a way that captures the artwork’s impression and meaning visually.

The vital role of photography in land art is evident through Smithson’s 457 meter-long spiral created in 1970, called Spiral Jetty. Photography is used not only for documentary means, but also to communicate or record the artwork’s essential conceptual aspects. Gianfranco Gorgoni, a photographer who travelled across the United States to document the most famous land artworks in the seventies, photographed Spiral at a slightly heightened angle in order to distinguish the human figure standing at the spiral’s edge

(Cohen) (fig. 1.4). Although black and white is the traditional aesthetic choice for a documentary photograph, in Gorgoni’s photograph, it also functions to intensify the contrast between the dark shape of the spiral artwork and its muted environment. Furthermore, the

14 A subcategory of land art is “ecovention” (ecology and invention), which includes art projects with a specific environmental concern in mind and often aesthetically merge into nature (Wildly 60). An example of this type of land art is the work of Patricia Johanson.

15 Land artists such as Richard Long and Robert Smithson are celebrated for these types of large-scale sculptures and/or interventions, which have also dominated the genre in terms of being published and recognised (Minickiello 93).

human figure, which is Smithson, becomes a black silhouette that merges into the spiral, as if becoming one of thousands of rocks that the spiral is compiled of. By adding Smithson into the photograph, Gorgoni reflects upon the relationship between the artist, his creation, and the landscape.

Two essential concepts of Spiral - time and non-site - cannot be communicated through a single photograph. Although the spiral remains intact today, it is slowly disappearing and in a state of constant change due to being exposed to the natural elements.

These changes occur over several months and years, their documentation depending upon photography. An aerial photographer from the Dia Art Foundation documents the artwork twice a year since 2012, but the ultimate uncontrollability of the site and the artwork’s unrepresentability are key features of Spiral. Steve Zucker & Beth Harris discuss Smithson’s interest in entropy - the idea in physics that the natural tendency of all things on earth is to move from order to disorder, to chaos. They state that, “Smithson is imposing a geometric order into this natural landscape, into this vast space that is in the process, over millions of years, disassembling”. The artwork adapts itself to the environment, becomes synonymous with the natural processes of the site, and will eventually once again become one with the environment.

Smithson’s accompanying video and essay to Spiral point toward the unrepresentability of the site, which Boetzkes examines in her chapter “Spiral Jetty: Allegory and the Recovery of the Elemental” (2010). Like all temporary or constantly-changing artwork, the artwork is “dispersed and located in the interaction between the site and the textual media that represent it” (Boetzkes 67). Smithson coined the term ‘Nonsite’ to refer to his gallery installations made using material derived from one of his site-specific works (fig.

1.5). Referring to these works, Smithson says that, “the relation of a Nonsite to the site is also like that of language to the world: it is a signifier and the Site is that which is signified”.

Photography, like language, is a representation of the world and can therefore never encompass the site itself. Boetzkes claims that, “the site’s unrepresentability becomes the subject of the artwork” (67), as one becomes aware of the absence of the site when looking at its representation.

Smithson makes works of art out of documentations of his original land art, adding a new dimension of meaning in the form of an awareness of absence and unrepresentability.

The non-site brings our attention to the fact that a photograph cannot encompass the marked site, but rather is an intentional framing - a representation - of the site at a specific moment.16 According to David Green, the site is not only marked by the artist’s own hand, but also by the camera, which marks the site and re-materializes this mark into a photograph

(263). The camera thus creates a mark made by light whilst capturing this mark in time. This aspect of photography as the trace of a specific time and place, in addition to the idea of non-site, is reflected through Mendieta’s photographs of her earth-body works.17 Unlike

Smithson’s spiral, one cannot visit what is depicted in Mendieta’s photographs; the performances and most of the marks have vanished and only continue to exist through their documentation. Mendieta’s works are non-sites that, due to their ephemerality and inclusion of (an imprint of) the body, not only meditate upon the absence of the site, but also the absence of the artist and her performance. I will thus argue that Mendieta’s photographic documents are at once non-sites and what I shall call “non-performances.”

Just as non-sites are signifiers of the site, non-performances are signifiers of the performance. In other words, the non-performance is a (documentary and conceptual) trace of the performance that has-been.18 The concept of trace is most palpable in Mendieta’s Silueta photographic series (1973-77), where it is three-fold: the material trace or imprint that Mendieta’s body leaves in the earth; the conceptual trace of what humans leave on earth after death; and the temporal trace of the moment that the photograph is taken. The siluetas range from imprints and sculptures in the form of a female body to depictions of Mendieta’s own body (fig. 1.7). For one specific series of images, Mendieta imprinted her own body into

16 The term “marked site” is how Rosalind Krauss categorized land art such as that of Smithson in her 1979 essay “Sculpture in the Expanded Field”. She found that these types of artworks in the land are neither landscape nor not-landscape. This is another way of saying that land art is imposed upon its landscape, yet does not become a part of it. I use this term due to its broadness - it can refer to many different kinds of land artworks - and connection to Green’s conception of a photographically “marked site”.

17 Mendieta also created sculptures that are materially and formally connected to her sites. The focus of my argument lies within photography, but much could be said about her sculptures in relation to the notion of non-site as well.

18 I am using Roland Barthes’ term of the has-been, meaning that which has passed, which I will elaborate upon later in this section.

the Mexican beach and documented the disappearing mark being swallowed up by the sea

(fig. 1.8). The material trace left by Mendieta’s body is not only documented in photographs, but also leaves its presence (Boetzkes 151). As Boetzkes states, “the imprint mortifies its referent, tying together its moment of origin (when the body leaves its mark) with the perpetual loss of that moment” (151).19 The work is thus paradoxical in nature, since it presents us with both the absence of a real body and at the same time, a presence of the body through its form, its imprint (Rovirosa). The body is at the same time absent and present, but also alien to and subsumed by the earth (Boetzkes 146). Such a series thus brings our attention to the persisting presence of the artist through the lasting documentations of her work but also in a broader sense, the imprint, or ecological footprint, a human individual leaves on earth.

The trace that a human leaves on earth has also been referred to in photography theory, where Susan Sontag states in On Photography (1977) that, “a photograph is not only an image (as painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask” (120). In a discussion of

Mendieta’s sculptural and photographic interventions with the land, Ara Osterweil conjures

Roland Barthes’ conception of photography as a carnal medium, stating that, “photography’s umbilical link to the body is part of the magic that Mendieta came to believe painting lacked” (3). This ‘umbilical link’ refers to the connection one feels when gazing at the subject in a photograph, which one knows is the trace of a real person (Barthes 81). Barthes contends with Sontag that photography is evidence of something having been present, or what he calls the has-been, rather than the resemblance of something to reality (Batchen 40). Mendieta’s Silueta not only emphasises the absence of her mark and/or performance, but also its ephemerality and non-existence in reality - its death, its has-been. The photographs of Mendieta’s interventions with the land, where she was acting out performances and reducing that act to a singular frame, can be seen as a document of the death of a performance. The moment captured in the photograph is when the act of performing has passed. Both the imprint and the photograph are traces of the performance,

19 Stated in reference to George Didi-Huberman.

which become a non-performance. But what if the imprint is enlivened by the shooting of several photographs? This is what art historian George Baker suggests in “Photography’s

Expanded Field” (2005). Based on the quaternary structure that Rosalind Krauss originally created with regard to the expanding field of sculpture, Baker makes a diagram of the intersection between film and photography, narrative and stasis (fig. 1.6). One might assume that photography is always still, but Baker positions modernist photography in the not-narrative-not-stasis section. Although the photographic image was historically characterized by its “petrification or stasis” (25), Baker argues that during the 20th century, the social usage of photography transformed its consumption and, “thrust the photographic signifier into motion” (26). One of the changes Baker identifies is the “aesthetic organization

[of photography] into sequence and series” (25). The photography of land art would traditionally fall outside of Baker’s diagram due to its straight-forward, static, documentary form. As is being argued in this section however, we could also consider the artistic and formal choices involved in the photographic documentation of land art. Specifically, the narrative, or rather not-stasis, qualities of the serial format that Mendieta uses in order to communicate key concepts pertaining to the original earth-body works.

Although photography is inherently still, the artist has the ability to create a sense of movement or time by juxtaposing different images next to each other. Mendieta did not just use photography for documentary sake but also artistically, in order to emphasize certain parts of the sculpture/performance by taking pictures from different angles and distances. In

Untitled from her Silueta series, the signifier of Mendieta’s photograph - the silueta - is thrust into motion. Untitled consists of multiple photographs of an imprint of the Goddess pose (arms held up at a 90-degree angle) into the sand (fig. 1.8). Over the course of the sculpture/performance disappearing, Mendieta was able to recreate the scene in photographic fragments. The viewer fills up the gap of the movement between one still image and the next, where the imprint fills up with water and empties as the sea retracts. The selection of nine images shows the viewer how the sea swallows up the trace of her body and leaves a less distinguishable imprint every time it retreats in different photographs. One can hereby meditate on the subtle changes that occur between each photo, emphasizing the

passing of time, which is always an element that becomes acutely obvious and real when looking at a photograph, but is here elongated due to the work’s serial form.

The beginning of this section set out to see whether an aesthetic awareness of the unrepresentability of nature can be forged through the photographic documentation of land art. I found that Smithson’s non-sites problematize the representation of the earth and his own representation of the site of his artwork. A land artwork like Smithson’s Spiral Jetty is positioned in-between the site and its representations, whereas Mendieta’s earth-body works only continue to exist through their documentations. I argued that Mendieta’s photography - particularly her Silueta series - can be considered as both non-site and non-performance, since it can neither encompass the place-specific site nor the time-specific performance of the original artwork. Her photography is thus a framing of her has-been performances in nature. The conceptual connections to absence, trace, and death within her photography series enforced this idea of non-performance. Baker’s proposition of the modernist image in motion however, opened up the possibility for a non-static representation of Silueta. Photography is therefore not only a necessary medium for its documentation of ephemeral artworks in nature, but can also become the conceptual grounding of the artwork in the process of framing.

1.2. From Painterly to Photographic: The Female Nude in Nature

When thinking of the female nude in the history of modern art, one may think of Paul

Gauguin’s Tahitian girls, Édouard Manet’s reclining prostitute, or Henri Matisse’s abstract renderings of the female form. Although feminists have opposed the narrow and male-dominated view of women in art history, what I have found to be overlooked is the artists’ shared use of nature or natural elements that are often used to enhance the femininity of their female subjects/forms. Gauguin’s female subjects are depicted amidst the

Tahitian landscape; Manet’s portraits of women feature flowers, plants, and/or fruits; and

Matisse’s colourful female bodies resemble and are surrounded by leaves (figs. 1.9-1.11).

These three men are amongst the most famous figurative painters of the 20th century, but one of the most famous female artists symbolic for this time period is Frida Kahlo, known for her self-portraits with flower crowns, animals, and jungle backgrounds (fig. 1.12). This visual association between the female body and nature is thus not limited to the male gaze and seems to be a part of a deep-set history of portraying women with ‘natural’ symbols of femininity in painting. Reaching further than these specific painters, we may identify this as a long tradition in art history of portraying women as goddesses borne out of the earth, in touch with nature, or infused within it.

Considering this art historical tradition of the nude in nature, how has this trope evolved in the medium photography? In order to map a transition from romantic to critical representations of the nude in nature, I will first look at the painterly aesthetic of pictorialist photography. Anne Brigman will be considered as a female pictorialist photographer that resisted the conventional compositions of the time. Moving towards more contemporary and photographic aesthetics, key feminist issues concerning the female body - the male gaze, essentialism, and the concealment of nudity - will be discussed with regard to their connections with nature. The symbolism of the goddess will be analyzed as a framework upon which female artists such as Mary Beth Edelson enact their agency as creators and active subjects. Turning towards the goddess of beauty, the painting Birth of Venus (1485) will be compared to Honey Long & Prue Stent’s appropriation of this image in Venus Milk (2015). Lastly, Laura Aguilar’s photography will serve as a basis upon which to explore how the environment is used in the nude in nature.

What is it that makes a nude woman glorious? It will be found that she is at once the

context of what is beautiful in nature and the contrast to what is rugged and crude.

She brings to the varied and heterogeneous lines of a landscape the flowing curves,

the homogeneous form of the human’s place on earth (Blumann 3).

Written in 1918 by photographer Sigismund Blumann, “The Human Form in Photography” is a brief review of photographers in the midst of modernism depicting the nude in nature.

In this particular excerpt, Blumann describes what makes an excellent nude photograph, suggesting the beauty of the sitter should merge with the beauty of the environment, but

simultaneously cause some kind of contrast. Seeking to imitate certain qualities of painting, pictorialists (late 19th and early 20th century) would manipulate the photograph to look softer and even have brushstrokes in order to produce romantic pictures with a sense of drama or poetry (Gough 12). Included in Blumann’s article is a photograph by Herbert B.

Turner, of a half-nude woman sitting on the side of a lake, the sun at her back, lighting up her soft hair (fig. 1.13). Such photographs by male artists were the norm.

However, half of Blumann’s article is instead dedicated to discussing the talent of

Anne Brigman, who embraced the nude - a subject that had before been preserved for male artists - as a powerful way to stage her mythical and symbolic scenes. Brigman took to the landscape as an opportunity to create portraits of herself and close friends. Utilizing her independence as a working female photographer, the subjects in her photographs often reflect her own personal strength and empowerment (Summerlin 60). Although she faced judgements of essentialism due to her nakedness, according to Melody Gough, “her pictures helped solidify photography’s ascendancy to the status of fine art for the first time in the history of the medium” (11). Blumann also recognised this in his article, as he states that

Brigman is the best when it comes to communicating a “definite idea” through a photograph.

More than just a beautiful woman sitting in nature, “her figures are so intimately related to the surroundings as to be indispensably a part of the entirety” (Blumann 3). Although similar in their pictorial qualities, Brigman’s Soul of the Blasted Pine stands in clear contrast to Turner’s In the Sunlight (figs. 1.13-1.14). A dramatic energy exudes from Brigman’s stretched out body, which, due to the bizarrely skewed horizon, simultaneously becomes part of the earth, tree and air.

Brigman is one of the first female photographers to show such creative freedom, stepping away from the traditions of the nude set up by predecessors of men. Since the representation of nude women had been limited to the perspective of male artists, most nudes presented the female body as an object of desire and beauty. This tradition continued into the 20th century with Rimantas Dichavičius’ photographs showing a romantic view of young women in serene scenes in nature (fig. 1.15).20 Laura Mulvey most famously

20 This is not to say that there are not any contemporary male artists that challenge the tradition of the nude.

Historically however, there has been a prevalence of representations of women as passive figures or characters.

recognized this representation of women in her essay “Visual Pleasure and Narrative

Cinema,” published in 1975. Although Mulvey discussed the specific genre of 1950s

Hollywood film, the notion of the male gaze has since been adapted to many different forms of representation. Before Mulvey’s conceptualisation of this phenomenon, John Berger took a broader view at how art and media representations affect our ‘way of seeing’. He stated that, “women are depicted in quite a different way from men - not because the feminine is different from the masculine - but because the “ideal” spectator is always assumed to be male and the image of the woman is designed to flatter him” (64). Mulvey noticed how the actions of female characters always revolve around the plot of the male characters. As she explains that, “woman [is] still tied to her place as bearer of meaning, not maker of meaning” (2).

Even though a whole universe and narrative is created in films that usually centres around one point of view, this also holds true for photography; the artist forms the meaning of the image through framing, composition, etc. and the subject bears the photograph’s meaning.

So how have female photographers claimed their place as makers of meaning instead of mere bearers? And how do they appropriate symbols first employed by the painter’s male gaze to reclaim the female nude in nature?

Brigman chronicled the first step in the transition from passive object of the male gaze towards active subject in one’s own photograph. Her “proto-feminist landscapes” paved the way for many female artists after her, although most artists only started creating at concurring times with the land art and feminist art movement from the seventies (Wolfe).

Perhaps this peak in female artists creating nudes in nature was sparked by Linda Nochlin’s

1971 essay “Why Have There Been No Great Women Artists,” which includes the following statement: “there exist [...] no representations of artists drawing from the nude model which include women in any role but that of the nude model” (Nochlin 160). Like Birgman, many of the artists opted for self-portraiture, occupying the role of the model themselves and thereby avoiding the problematic relation between an active gazer (photographer) and passive object. Artists like Mendieta, Edelson, Judy Dater and Judy Chicago used certain poses and angles to distinguish their nudes in nature from those of the traditional male view.

A noticeable contrast is present in how their subjects often raise their arms in order to draw

attention to themselves, whereas in Turner and Dichavičius’ pictures, the subjects’ arms are limp and passive (figs. 1.13-1.17). The women’s strong stances often symbolise empowered goddess figures - the goddess being a powerful creator instead of a passive subject (Wolfe).

Like Brigman however, some artists like Mendieta were dismissed as being essentialist rather than feminist. And although images of female bodies celebrating such notions as fertility may conjure up ideas of an essential link between women and nature, the artists are often trying to communicate something more than this. As Catrin Gersdorf explains in her article, “Nature and the Body: Ecofeminism, Land Art, and the Work of Ana

Mendieta (1948-1985)” (2006):

Associations of female body and landscape, while they can never completely skirt the

danger of articulating oppressive ideologies, can nevertheless trouble established

ways of thinking, speaking, and visualising selfhood and cultural identity (217).

In her series Woman Rising (1973), Edelson for instance, assumes a specific pose upon which she paints or collages many different interpretations of goddess archetypes, such as those,

“found in the Hindu depictions of Kali Ma, pre-Christian sculptures of Sheela na Gig, or Greek images of Baubo” (Zadawaski 334-336). Arms raised with palms towards the viewer, finger stretched, and legs stood wide apart, Edelson sees this pose as, “calling on the Goddess; a way of getting Her attention, identifying with Her, and slipping into Her body. I was calling on energy and on Spirit” (qtd. in Kimball 98). Edelson further expresses this energy and spirit in her images by painting energy waves on top of one of her silver-gelatin black & white photographs (fig. 1.18). In her discussion of Edelson’s goddess-infused work, Mary Zadawski suggests that those who critique Edelson’s work as essentialist have not assessed the vitality and powerful stance she brings to the goddess in Woman Rising. She states that, “goddess mythology and imagery can provide an alternative and powerful language for the self-realization of women as it breaks free from stereotypical boundaries placed on women by God-language” (334).21 Through developing her own photographic language and channelling the goddess, Edelson reflects upon the multiplicity of her own

21 “God-language” is a term that Zadawaski borrows from Carol P. Christ and Judith Plaskow and refers to the male-centric language used in the three main Western religions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

being through the different archetypes she assigns to herself whilst simultaneously symbolizing a connection to the general experience of being a woman. Much like how Joanna Walker writes about the personal and universal in Mendieta’s imprints, “they are pseudo self-portraits but equally they could be interpreted as being generalised ‘symbols’ of the female mark” (23).

There is a complex relation to concealment in representations of the female body.

Traditionally, the female body would be partly concealed in order to maintain the subject’s modesty or include an erotic aspect for the male gaze. In Turner’s and Dichavičius’ photographs, for instance, either the top or bottom half of the body are intentionally hidden

(figs. 1.13 and 1.15). Contemporary duo Honey Long & Prue Stent actively think about their methods of concealment in order to complicate the voyeurism of the viewer’s gaze (Shuxia

201). They confront the viewer with female bodies made anonymous by covering them in fabrics that cling to their flesh. The artists go into conversation with the land, not by blending their subjects into the environment, but by seeking out an animalistic relation to nature. Banana Slug and Rhinestone Kelp for instance, put the female body in the absurd position of an aquatic animal and plant (figs. 1.19-1.20). By merging the surreal with the beautiful, a new active female subject emerges from nature.

Unlike the female artists previously discussed, who took portraits of themselves in order to avoid objectifying their subject, Long & Stent also portray others in order to challenge the complex relations between beauty, nudity, nature, the female body, and the gaze. They see the historical role of beauty as being the female counterpart to the masculine concept of the sublime:

The idea of beautification involves a strong nuance of trying to conceal, pacify

something that’s otherwise confrontational, dangerous or even gruesome.

Historically, beautifying has been a way of controlling, and we wanted to look at how

this operates in relation to the female body (qtd. in Baconsky).

This aspect of concealment as a form of exercising control is apparent through art historical representations of the female body in painting. The Venus in Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus (1485) for example, is trying to cover herself with both hands while the female figure

flanking her left side is also in the act of attempting to cover Venus’ naked body with a cloak

(fig. 1.21).

Alongside its representation of (the concealment of) beauty, is also the painting’s depiction of ‘aura’. On the other side of the painting are two figures blowing at the Roman goddess, which was interpreted by 16th century writer Giorgio Vasari as endowing Venus with aura, meaning a ‘light breeze’ (Takac). As conceptualized by Walter Benjamin in “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” (1935), aura is the magical or spiritual essence an artwork possesses due to its uniqueness and presentation in a certain setting such as a museum or church. Benjamin argues that the aura is destroyed by the modern ability to reproduce an artwork using photography or film. Because beauty is also regarded as something unique to an individual, special and other-wordly (in the sense of goddesses like

Venus), perhaps we can also conceive of the aura in terms of the female body, which is historically represented not only as something beautiful and unique, but also as something powerful that needs to be controlled or concealed. The aura of the female body - its mystique

- could then also be destroyed, perhaps most effectively through the reproducible medium of photography, which then simultaneously disrupts the aura surrounding the artwork.

Long & Stent appropriate Botticelli’s Birth in Venus Milk (2015). A female figure stands in the centre of a large rock edging on the flat sea (fig. 1.22). Her body and face are covered by a pink fabric, yet the outline of her legs, breasts and face are eerily visible. Unlike the shy stance of Botticelli’s Venus, this figure stands upright with her face outwards and directly pointed towards the lens. And instead of a light breeze, the fabric is caught in a strong wind, shaping around her head as if mimicking the cloak of the grim reaper; this venus is not the personification of birth, fertility, or love, but instead death. The shell that

Venus emerges from in Birth symbolizes her birth as a beautiful creation from the sea - a pearl.22 In an article about “seashell aesthetics,” writer Martabel Wasserman suggests an alternative interpretation. Noticing that it is a half-shell that is depicted in Birth, she finds this to be a significant indicator of death; that is, the death of the organism that used to live in the full shell. The shape of a shell in Long & Stent’s rendering is imitated in the pool of

22 Botticelli’s painting is based on the myth that Venus was formed from seafoam and rode a seashell to land.

pink liquid that the female figure seems to emerge from. The pink of the body flows seamlessly into that of the ‘shell’, suggesting a merger of the goddess and nature, as the rock, water and the goddess at once become connected. Whereas Botticelli used the shell to refer to the symbolism of the birth of beauty, the shell in Venus is instead attached to its origin of rock, thereby connecting the shell to its materiality in nature instead of to some external cultural meaning.

The environment is an important factor in the photographs by women trying to reclaim the nude in nature. It is not only the representation of the nude female body that must be re-examined, but also how it is positioned in nature, and in what kind of environment. Romanticist painting and pictorial photography used the device of pathetic fallacy23 as a way to make a connection between an individual subject’s emotions and their inanimate surroundings (Foster 78). In his book chapter “Woman’s Body & Other Objects of Nature,” David William Foster repeatedly conjures up images of sylphs and Edenic meadows as the ideal figure and setting of the traditional nude in nature. In the Sunlight comes quite close to such a picturesque scene, as the subject is in harmony with her natural surroundings

(fig. 1.13). Blumann stated that a glorious depiction of the nude in nature, “brings to the varied and heterogeneous lines of a landscape the flowing curves, the homogeneous form of the human’s place on earth” (3). This is a way of saying that human and nature are opposites

- heterogeneous and homogeneous - yet also form some kind of balanced relation together.

Foster’s chapter focuses on Laura Aguilar’s series of fifteen photographs taken in 1996 in the

New Mexican Desert, and suggests that Aguilar’s “deconstructive photographic gaze” (78) disrupts the balance between human and nature that is depicted in the tradition of the nude in nature.

Foster elaborates on this notion in his analysis of Aguilar’s Nature Self-Portrait #1 (fig. 1.23). The lines, which Blumann also refers to in his quotation, are a very important part of this photograph, as the line on Aguilar’s back correlates to the crevice in the rock below her. Yet, unlike Blumann’s praise for the “flowing curves” that suggest a continuity between subject and nature, the two lines in Aguilar’s photograph are not entirely aligned. This is not

23 This is originally a literary device.

only disruptive to the eye, which is naturally drawn to symmetry, but according to Foster also indicates that the body cannot become fully fused with its environment. The texture of her smooth skin in comparison to the rough rocks also halts this fusion, where the difference between these textures is emphasised by the black and white format. Amelia Jones declares that, “the boundaries between human and nonhuman melt away” (93) in Aguilar’s work.

With specific reference to Nature Self-Portrait #7 (fig. 1.24), she contends that although Aguilar invites the male gaze with her central position in the photograph, she ‘others’ herself by mimicking the nonhuman boulders in the landscape and rejects the gaze by turning her back to the viewer (fig. 1.24). Foster instead argues that the point of Aguilar’s series lies precisely in the fact that these boundaries do not entirely melt away (80). While some of Aguilar’s photographs distinctively blur the boundaries between her body and nature - in

Grounded #106 (1992) for instance, one does not even notice, at first glance, the presence of

Aguilar’s body in the landscape - I would concur with Foster that there is always a deliberate disconnection between the lines of the landscape and her body (fig. 1.25).

By depicting humans and nature in harmony, the use of pathetic fallacy in pictorial photography romanticizes the human-nature relation instead of showing its complexity.

Moreover, an eroticization of the gaze takes place in these early photographic nudes in nature due to their aesthetics of softening the body and the landscape. Hence the reason why many female artists instead opt for a non-romantic natural environment: Long & Stent make the rugged rock the centre-point out of which the Venus emerges (fig. 1.22); Edelson depicts herself in a mountainous area in Goddess Head (fig. 1.16); and Aguilar situates herself in the hostile desert. By choosing an environment that is in conflict with the body, these artists complicate the relation between human and nature instead of soothing it.

The objective of this section was to uncover the photographic strategies that female artists use to reclaim representations of the female nude in nature. Whereas pictorialists created painterly and romantic depictions of the nude in nature, female artists during and after the seventies sought to deconstruct the male gaze and its symbolism of femininity. The issue of how to present the female body nude in nature without erotisizing or essentializing

it is at the forefront of these works. Whether it is by positioning the subject in environments at odds with the human body, confronting or rejecting the viewer’s gaze, addressing the power in concealing the body, or assuming the Great Goddess pose, female artists boldly attempt to reclaim the nude in nature in order to photographically communicate more complex human relations to nature.

In both sections, the idea of framing in photography played an essential role. In the documentation of land art, certain concepts were added through the use of photography; the passing of time was mimicked through a serial format and the ephemerality of human life was emphasized by the photograph’s connection to trace. In capturing their nude portraits in nature, photographers used the strategies noted above to frame female bodies in ways that differentiate their images from conventional representations of the nude in nature. Whether photography acts as their main medium or not, it plays a large role in artists’ interventions in nature - not only as a practical recording device, but also to shed light upon specific aspects of the human-nature relation through the process of framing.

Chapter 2

The Expanding Moving Image of the Female Body in Nature

The digital turn in media studies is known as the transition from analogue, “mechanical,” technologies towards the digital, which took place from approximately 1990 onwards

(Mitchell 113).24 This expanded the possibilities for the creation and projection of the moving image. Before the digital turn, video art had already paved the way for the moving image to be accepted into the “white cube” of museum settings. Female artists like Joan Jonas, Martha Rosler, Pipilotti Rist and Mendieta embraced the easily-accessible and quick-producing medium, leading the way for experimentation within the spectrum of electronic arts (Herriman). As Mendieta was exploring the relationship between the body and nature in the seventies, ecofeminists were simultaneously voicing their concerns about the environment and feminism. In 1988, sound artist David Dunn writes “Wilderness as Reentrant Form: Thoughts on the Future of Electronic Art and Nature,” arguing that experimental electronic art has the power to reconnect audiences to nature. Two decades later, Dunn’s argument is still relevant today. In an age where humans are growing more and more distant from nature, the moving image can bridge the gap between culture and nature in an experiential manner. Considering that the inclusion of the moving image into the museum has grown parallel to global awareness for environmental and feminist issues, how are these three movements linked?

In this chapter, I will present two recent exhibitions that closely engage with the moving image, nature, and the female body. Section 2.1 will analyse the travelling exhibition:

Covered in Time and History: The Films of Ana Mendieta (2016-present). The significance of the time-based nature of these works will be uncovered using Thomas Elsaesser’s theory on the position of the moving image in the museum. Building upon Mendieta’s (serial) photography discussed in section 1.1, Elsaesser’s perspective on motion vs. stillness will be applied to the juxtaposition of Mendieta’s still photographs and moving images in the same exhibition space.

24 In his passage about the digital turn, W.T.J. Mitchell categorizes photography and cinema as “analog-based

“mechanical” media” that, due to the emergence of the Internet, were being replaced by “new media”.

In the same year that Mendieta’s films gained their rightful recognition in the art world 30 years after her death (Cecilia), Pipilotti Rist - fellow pioneer in video art - received a 30-year retrospective of her work (Gioni). As an artist who witnessed, worked, and experimented with the expansion of the moving image, Rist’s exhibition, Pixel Forest (2016-2017), is used in section 2.2 as a basis upon which to delve into how digital technologies have broadened the possibilities of the moving image in terms of how it is presented in a museum space. Both artists carry themes of performance, the female body, and nature that will be analyzed through the aesthetics and content of their works.

This chapter focuses on how the expanding possibilities for the presentation of the moving image in space - from single-screen projection (section 2.1) to multi-channel installation (section 2.2) - in turn expands our understanding of how and why the female body is represented in nature. At the heart of this chapter is the question: how does the time-based or space-based form of the moving image affect the expression of ecofeminist content?

2.1. From Outside to Inside: Ana Mendieta’s Films in the Museum

Mendieta did not consider herself to be a filmmaker. Yet, she created a total of 104 films between 1971 and 1981, which reveal an experimental edge to Mendieta’s oeuvre. Using analogue cameras ranging from Super 8 to ¾’’ U-matic, she produced different aesthetic effects to enhance her subject matter (Cecilia). Having worked in the seventies and eighties, all of her films were originally created using analogue technologies.25 Although these were restored and digitized in order to exhibit them in high-quality, the films retain their original analogue aesthetic. Covered celebrates the films for their own artistic merit instead of merely their function of documenting Mendieta’s performances. Combining 20 films with 27 photographs, the exhibition facilitates a conversation between these two media and the different aspects and themes they emphasize in Mendieta’s work.

25 Although Mendieta also worked with video, I will refer to Mendieta’s moving images as ‘films,’ since the majority of the moving images in the exhibition were made using film cameras and the exhibition refers to them as films too.

I will attempt to uncover the significance of Mendieta’s presence, as a woman performing encounters with nature, on screen in the museum. Thomas Elsaesser’s

“Stop/Motion” (2011), on the disruptive role of the moving image in the museum and the tension between stillness and motion, will provide the theoretical basis to analyze different

Covered exhibitions. From outside to inside - this section’s title - refers to the movement of

Mendieta’s performances from outside, in nature, inside the museum, as well as the inclusion of her films into the museum. Considering that the exhibition is titled “Covered in Time and

History,” the focus of this discussion will be on the aspect of time and the position of film as a time-based medium inside the contemporary art museum. Moreover, themes of absence, presence and the form and aesthetic of Mendieta’s film will be discussed through analyses of specific works.

The increased inclusion of the moving image into the museum disrupts many aspects of exhibition-making and experience. The moving image used to be in many ways opposed to the art world, where it was exclusively screened in cinemas and solely still objects were shown in galleries. Video art broke this habit with its emergence in gallery spaces in the seventies (Herriman). Although, “video was perceived as a medium on the outside,” of cinema and art, it attracted many artists due to its quality as a kind of “audio-visual sketchbook” and the fact that it could be “operated by a single person in just about any location or situation” (Meigh-Andrews xiii). This usage of video can also be identified in

Mendieta’s process, where she was able to easily and quickly document her outdoor performances.26 Even though the digital turn erased the ontological and material differences between film and video, they were and mostly remain part of opposite social spheres and forms of consumption (Elsaesser 119). So when the “black box” that is needed to screen a large-scale film is introduced to the “white cube” of the museum, essentially the entire foundation of the museum experience is interrupted; the visitor’s eyes need to adapt to the sudden darkness and movement, their body needs to figure out where to stand or sit, and

26 Although the majority of the films seems to be recorded by Mendieta herself, the camera taking a still position like on a tripod, some films in which Mendieta herself is performing are taken from different angles and thus must have been accompanied by someone else. In Ocean Bird (Washup) (1974) for example, the camera follows Mendieta’s floating body.

their mind fluctuates between concentration and distraction, as they think about the amount of time they should spend watching (Elsaesser 109-110).27 All of this combined summons a tension that becomes part of the work’s presentation and experience. In discussing a work by

Bill Viola, Elsaesser describes this viewing experience as being akin to experiencing

“ecological time,” having to adjust to, “a “different” motion of “life”’ that radically differs from the fast-paced life many people in the modern world adhere to daily (Elsaesser 115).

The visitor of Covered must also adjust to viewing the non-linear films of Mendieta. The films are presented in a dark space with spotlights on the photographs and wall texts.

The traditional “white cube” format of the museum, where dark spaces are rare, is thus reversed into a “black box”. Quite cyclical in their nature, each film is at most four minutes long and played in a loop. Often without a beginning or end, it is as if history is constantly repeating itself (Osterweil). Yet, the experience of time seems to be an “ecological” one too, in the sense that Mendieta immerses (the imprint of) her body into the classical elements - earth, air, water, and fire - and the movement, disappearance, position, or form of her body/imprint adapts to the movement of the depicted elements. For example, in the film

Ochún, the curved lines of the imprint echo the wrinkles of water that flow through the bodily form as well as the sand underneath it (fig. 2.1). But the constant looping of each video can also feel like time is stuck or captured, like in a photograph.

Film scholar Ara Osterweil claims that Mendieta’s Silueta series (consisting of both films and photographs), “captured the artist’s inevitably and deliberately failed attempt to fuse human and geologic time”. Although the sites where her performances take place often have some kind of connection to human or geological history - the siluetas in particular making a mark upon their site - the imprints and performances are short-lived and impermanent. Much like how painting and sculpture strive to create an “eternal work of art,”

Mendieta’s photographs tend to give the illusion of immortalising these moments. In making them still, the imprints of these moments as photographs become substitutes of the performances. On the contrary, the films draw our attention to the duration and passing of the performances. Osterweil suggests that, “it’s precisely their fluid imperfections that lend

27 I say “large-scale film” here since video was often instead presented on television monitors, for which the darkened room, the “black box,” is not necessary.

the films the most resonance in the discourse of ephemerality at the heart of Mendieta’s work”. Only one of Mendieta’s films was ever presented during her lifetime and there is doubt about whether the artist ever meant for her films to be presented as art (Cecilia). But as Osterweil claims, the imperfections in the works (only one film has an edited soundtrack and none were visually manipulated) is exactly what makes them so intriguing, especially in consideration of her recurring themes of time and mortality.

The fusion of Mendieta’s photographs and films in Covered emphasises these issues of time through the existing contrast that forms between the still and moving image presented next to each other. This contrast is especially effective in the presentation at the

Jeu de Paume, Paris, where a few photographs and films are combined on one wall of the space with dim spotlights on the photographs that do not distract from the presence of the films (fig. 2.3). This stands in contrast to the earlier exhibitions at NSU Art Museum,

Lauderdale, which presented all the films next to each other, and at Gropius Bau, Berlin, which included large spotlights on the photographic works (figs. 2.2 and 2.4). The viewer is encouraged to think about the different effects these two media have. Elsaesser discusses the debate surrounding motion versus stillness, concurring with Gilles Deleuze’s notion that, due to the movement of the eyes during the act of seeing, a visitor will always perceive a

“still” image as being in motion. Given the fact that our eyes and everything around us is in a state of constant movement, Elsaesser also debunks the myth that film is an illusion; he states that, “the cinema (as moving image) is not an illusion, simulation or imitation of life but its approximation, by other (mechanical, mathematical) means” (Elsaesser 118). In light of this concept, it is no wonder that Mendieta would feel drawn to the medium of film as a closer, and perhaps more natural, approximation of her momentary interactions with the environment. As Chris Decron noted, “the moving image has liberated exhibition spaces from the illusion of the static world” (qtd. in Elsaesser 119). Similarly, the presentation of

Mendieta’s moving images have liberated her photography’s illusion of static imprints. The films bring attention to the transience, disappearance, and movement of her performances as well as the natural flow of movement in the environment.

The films are able to capture the imperfections and the process of her performances instead of capturing one iconic and perfected moment of it. The imperfections that developed due to the weathering and lack of conservation of the celluloid - scratches, splashes and dirt - have been smoothed over during the process of digitization. This does not mean that Mendieta’s films now look digital, however. Each film was scanned frame by frame in order to capture every detail, “with every pixel mimicking film grain” (Cecilia). In this case, the digitized film really is an illusion of being analogue. At the same time, the films no longer look old or damaged due to the restoration. By watching these films, the viewer is transported to an earlier time through the high-definition analogue aesthetic. As Mendieta’s niece, Raquel Cecilia, says, “every time a film plays, in that moment, it is alive - blood drips, grass breathes, volcanoes erupt and water ebbs and flows”.

Due to their short duration and unfinished feel, the films carry an aura of mystery and especially of absence: the absence of Mendieta; a context; a narrative; or a precise meaning. As previously discussed in section 1.1., her images are traces of something that has already occurred and is now gone. Although I discussed the notion of trace with specific regard to photography, in the case of Mendieta, her films are also traces in the most simple sense that they are also documents of her performances. Creek for example, conveys the absence of a timeframe and completed narrative. The mystery of what Mendieta peers at behind her - something intentionally absent from the shot - throughout the duration of the film is never resolved (fig. 2.5). At first glance, one might find the image peaceful, but the continued inertness of Mendieta’s body and her sideways stare gives the film an unease. It is as if the terrible moment of a disruption of this peaceful scene is being endlessly prolonged in this short performance.

Rachel Weiss pinpoints this sense of discomfort in the viewer as something emerging from Mendieta’s vantage points and framing, which she describes as “Cyclopean” (61). The cyclops having one big eye instead of two, Weiss’ means that Mendieta often only frames one part, a close-up perhaps, of the situation and not an overview. Weiss asserts that this camerawork has a claustrophobic effect on the viewer, which I think is accentuated when the camera shakes or zooms in or out slowly (61). This palpable discomfort in the camerawork is

reinforced by seeing Mendieta’s destructive and sometimes morbid enactments; a lot of her work is centred around using blood and reflects on themes such as rape and violence.

Sweating Blood for instance, is a very “cyclopean” close-up shot of Mendieta’s face, the frame cutting off at the top of her neck (fig. 2.6). The blood that drips from her scalp down her face is a visual effect created through a kind of stop-motion process, where Mendieta stopped the recording in order to add more blood to her head. This work is one of the only ones created with the specific medium of film in mind, as there is no photographic documentation of it

(Cecilia). Sweating Blood is haunting in the tension between the stillness of Mendieta’s face and the slow movement of the blood.

Although much of her work is centred around absence, the films importantly emit a strong presence of myth, magic, ritual, and history. In Energy Charge for instance, she meditates upon the ancient myth of the tree of life and the idea of a ‘universal energy’ that runs through all forms of life (fig. 2.7) (Blocker 18). By combining video and 16mm film technology, she was able to create the sight of an inferno red silhouette shining inside of a tree (Oransky 7). In a way, Mendieta uses technology to rediscover what Dunn calls “natural magic,” in order to, “invoke a relationship to nature that is both ancient and contemporary”

(381). As Cecilia notices too, “the magic she creates in nature and the illusion the film creates by recreating that work as we view it, is the perfect marriage”. Through his own practice as a sound artist, Dunn creates a marriage between music and electronic technology by playing real-time recordings of nature in exhibition spaces, in order to produce an interaction between people and wilderness (381). Even though Mendieta’s connection to nature is not real-time, her films allow us to contemplate our place in the world as well as the mystery present in all forms of life and nature. By exposing the perhaps tragic truth of the ephemerality of her performances in the grand scale of geological time, she confronts the viewer with their own mortality. Bringing Mendieta’s moving images into the museum therefore supports Dunn’s call for a, “deeper experiential understanding” (378) of nature that immerses the viewer into the “black box,” while simultaneously destabilizing this immersion with the provoking presence of Mendieta as a human in collaborative performance with nature.

Mendieta’s presence in her films is sometimes literal, as she performs an act or situation with her own body, and other times takes the form of an energy that exudes from the screen. In traditional museum displays of still media, the objects have a certain

“thereness” and “produced presence” that is produced by the manner in which it is displayed

(often contrasted against the starkness of the “white cube”) and the general setting of the museum, which reinforces the viewer to see the presence of the art object as a kind of provocation (Elsaesser 111). Elsaesser suggests that the moving image both echoes and subverts this “produced presence,” mentioning self-display of the artist’s body as one way artists exaggerate this presence. Although Mendieta’s body is only present in 37 of her 104 videos, the ones she is present in always carry a certain intensity. Like the feminist artists depicting themselves nude in nature in section 1.2, Mendieta claims her space as a female artist and filmmaker through her presence. At the same time, she is also often focused on the act of covering and/or disappearing. In Blood Inside Outside for example, Mendieta gazes directly into the camera whilst emotionlessly covering her entire body in blood (fig. 2.8). Jeu de Paume curator, Howard Oransky, interprets this as a “psychological investigation of autonomy and vulnerability,” since she both confronts the viewer and hides herself with blood (7). By making something hidden inside our bodies visible, she perhaps points towards our universal connectedness as beings made of blood.

In this section, I have come to understand that Mendieta’s moving images are inextricable from her photography. By introducing the movement from outside - the “ecological time” from nature - inside the museum and combining it with her photography, Covered shatters the illusion of stillness that is present in Mendieta’s other art. The temporal quality of her film emphasises the ephemeral nature of the performances and bring the viewer closer to her magical encounters with the earth. Looking into a “cyclopean frame,” the viewer can develop an “experiential understanding” of the blood and energy that can only be conveyed through the movement of the blood dripping and time passing. Looped in a cycle, the films emit an endless oxymoron of presence and absence.

2.2. From Temporal to Spatial: Pipilotti Rist’s Pixel Forest as Media Ecology

“As technologies change; conceptions of time and space change and as a result, art changes; in the case of installation art, an entirely new art form may be created” (Ran 2). Not only the museum has to adapt to technological changes, but also entire genres of art. In this section, I will delve into the genre of video installation. Whereas the previous section centred around

Mendieta’s time-based films and the concept of time, this section will focus on the spatial qualities of digital video art installations. Although there are many recent ecological and feminist explorations in the intersection between video and installation,28 Rist’s exhibition

Pixel Forest at the New Museum, New York City, is an incredibly large-scale and diverse exhibition that provides many opportunities to reflect upon relationships between the female body, nature and technology. Since video installations are intrinsically tied to and dependent upon exhibition spaces (Morse 153), it is crucial to analyze the exhibition as a whole - as an ecosystem, if you will.

I will borrow and re-conceptualize the term “media ecology” in order to argue that

Pixel Forest can be considered as a complex ecology of different media and art works. Firstly however, I will briefly describe the exhibition and analyze certain works with regard to their connection to ecofeminist themes. Then the original concept of media ecology will be explained in order to reappropriate it towards the genres of installation and video art. The spatial qualities of the films in Pixel will lastly be considered as working towards an ecofeminist media ecology that is aware of the interconnectedness of the natural world.

The exhibition Pixel is named after one installation out of the 24 total works displayed. As a survey of Rist’s 30-year career, it tracks her development as an artist constantly working on the brink of new technologies (Smith). The singular artwork Pixel is an installation consisting of luminous strings hanging from the ceiling. The strings carry individual

LED-lights (3000 in total) signifying the pixels of an image that has “exploded in space,”

28 Melanie Bonajo’s temporary video setups, Sheba Chhachhi’s ecofeminist multimedia installations, Jennifer

Steinkamp’s animated digital plants that interact with the museum’s architecture, and Heather Phillipson’s digital environments are a few examples.

which the visitor can walk through and become a part of (Rist qtd. in Gioni) (fig. 2.9). The texture of these pixels is, “rough and irregular, like rocks or crystals” (Smith). Rist thus converges the basis of a digital image (the pixel) with the basis of the earth (its rocks).

Viewers become illuminated organisms within the pixel forest, while the colours of the

‘forest’ change in unison with the two-channel video projected on the corner of two walls behind the installation. The video alternates between Mercy Garden (2014) and Worry Will Vanish (2014). Both are a surreal mixture of close-up moving images of plants, human body parts, and the insides of a human body superimposed on each other.

Although Rist’s contemporary work shows brief instances of a distinguishably female body, she has significantly decreased this type of representation. Taking a similar route as

Mendieta, who stopped working with her own body due to being dismissed as essentialist,

Rist has strayed away from the self-performativity that dominated her work in the nineties.

Her earlier, overtly feminist videos like I’m Not The Girl Who Misses Much (1986), Pickelporno (1992), and Ever is Overall (1997) are violent or erotic explorations of the female experience. Mother Floor (1996) (projected on the floor) is a playful, exposing, and disorienting reversal of consumption, where the camera makes its way into a naked-bodied

Rist’s mouth and comes out of her anus, so that the image essentially consumes the viewer

(fig. 2.11). In its title as ‘mother’ however, it is perhaps also a reflection upon the female body that is expected to give birth and also the continuing circularity of life, as the sequence endlessly repeats itself. Although the majority of her work includes elements from the natural world and reflects upon femininity - in Ever, for example, she uses flowers to express the feminine - Sip My Ocean (1996) makes a strong connection between the ocean and the female body.

Projecting mirrored images into a corner, Sip alternates images of Rist swimming or traversing the ocean floors, floating objects and corals in the sea (fig. 2.12). While most of the video displays moving images, there is one segment where different still images of Rist morph into one another. Curator Nancy Spector, “proposes that the body of water [...] can be seen as a metaphor for the female body, mastering its own desire by giving it tangible, if fluid, form” (Mangini 1). In “Pipilotti’s Pickle: Making Meaning from the Feminine Position”

(2001), art historian Elizabeth Mangini argues that Rist’s visualization of female desire is grounded in gender difference and that she must, “work beyond or transgress that opposition in order to create a non-essentializing and therefore truly feminine work” (2).

Mangini suggests that Rist does this in Ever by seeing herself as both object and subject, subverting the male gaze to “envision a new concept of woman as the subject of representation” (1).

Although Sip speaks of a female desire to be “synchronized with the other,” (Rist qtd. in Louisiana) and the accompanying song Wicked Game (1989) by Chris Isaak sets this desire within the theme of love, we could also interpret this synchronization as being with nature and the body of water, like Spector does. Moreover, the feeling that exudes from

Rist’s hysterical singing of Wicked suggests a kind of protest, resistance, or fear of falling in love and becoming one with the other. The images would be serene and melancholic if left with Isaak’s version of the song, but Rist intentionally disturbs this dream-like world. With her disorientating camerawork of bodies, she also tries to “reverse the hierarchy between the object and the subject” (Rist qtd. in Louisiana) and “treat the body as a landscape” (Rist qtd. in Sam).29 By exaggerating a voyeuristic view of the female body, she subverts the male gaze and creates a representation that is sensual instead of sexual. In her 2000’s work however,

Rist’s expression of femininity is redirected from the female body towards the form and aesthetics of her artworks. With a recurrence of synthetic color use, soft lighting and organic forms, Rist confronts the viewer with a, “hyperfeminine aesthetic” (Gioni) that challenges our view and experience of nature.

The way in which the different components of Pixel interact with each other and add to each other’s meaning and aesthetics is akin to the idea of interconnected beings within a natural ecosystem. When the term ‘media ecology’ was coined by Neil Postman in 1968 however, it referred to human communication systems rather than the natural world. It was meant to open up a new field of study into how communication media (television, telephone, etc.) affect the way humans think, feel, and behave (Kaizen 126). Postman saw an environment as being a “complex message system,” which “structures what we can see, say

29 This kind of camerawork is perhaps more apparent through works such as RegenFrau (I am called a Plant) (1998), where the camera moves from close-ups of the wet grass to parts of Rist’s naked body and skin.

and therefore do. It assigns roles and insists on our playing them. It specifies what we are permitted and not permitted to do” (qtd. in Kaizen 127). Media ecology was supposed to study and expose these structures.

Postman’s description of an environment can be adapted to the museum, since it is also a space that dictates the way we should behave around art meant for silent contemplation. Margaret Morse, in her essay “Video Installation Art: The Body, the Image, and the Space-in-Between,” writes about the “museumization” of installation art:

Installation art could be said to transform the nature of the museum itself, now a

place fraught with problems related to the commodification of art and the

penetration of corporations with economic agendas of their own into the command

of the art world. Installation art in this setting reinvigorates all the spaces-in-between,

so that the museum-visitor becomes aware of the museum itself as a

mega-installation (166).

Whereas the museum usually portrays itself as a neutral space in the tradition of the “white cube,” installation completely changes this environment. Encouraging the visitor to become more aware of their position within this “mega-installation,” it also disrupts the accepted behaviour and role of the visitor in a museum, often inviting them to experience an artwork lying or sitting down in an unconventional setting. 4th Floor to Mildness for instance, a site-specific work for the New Museum, creates the opportunity for strangers to lie together on the intimate space of a bed (fig. 2.14).

If installation art can potentially be considered as a media ecology, perhaps the artist should be considered an ecologist. At least, that is what Gene Youngblood claims in his famous book Expanded Cinema (1970).30 According to Youngblood, the artist as ecologist is a researcher, whose responsibility it is to bring their audience an awareness of the inner workings of the global communication and information network (Kaizen 133). Although not strictly related to global networks, Rist does examine the way people present and construct their identities using digital technologies (Gioni). Jack Burnham, in his book Beyond Modern Sculpture, suggests that the artist’s role should be to, “specify how technology uses

30 Youngblood’s book was written before the digital turn and discusses the possibilities of video as an art form.

He coined the term “videosphere” to describe the network of connections between humans, technology and the earth that television provided.

us,” reflecting that, “art is becoming a matter of ecological insight” (Kaizen 130). What Pixel perhaps does most effectively is to draw attention to the similarity between the interconnectedness of technology and the “pre-existing interconnectedness of the plant world” (Laird). This is an “ecological insight” into both the human and natural environment, where technology is not only affecting human life but also ecological life. Dunn describes this phenomenon as, “a dynamic scenario in which the biosphere, human culture and the infusion of consciousness into technology are symbiotically transforming into a new pattern of life” (378). “Symbiotic” is an interesting word choice, since it is used in biology to denote the mutually beneficial relationship between two organisms. Similarly, two or more works from Rist’s exhibition are seen in a symbiotic relationship. For instance, Worry affects the colours displayed in Pixel and Pixel provides an alternative viewing experience of Worry. In his survey of “Media Ecology and the Arts,” Faye Ran argues that installation art is the ultimate art form of the postmodernist art movement. He identifies the most postmodern quality of installation as, “its refusal to concentrate meaning in a core, favoring instead the consideration of a number of elements and the mutual interrelationship of these elements to one another” (2). Unlike individual art works that each explore a separate, specific, “core” meaning, the multiple meanings of installations are scattered across objects in space, which can only be gathered by walking and experiencing the exhibition in its entirety. Ran splits the postmodern installation into two different forms: expanded sculpture or expanded theatre (3). Pixel focuses on context, site, and environment - which Ran associates with sculpture - as much as on performer, performance, and public - which he associates with theatre. Although many of Rist’s works feature some kind of performativity by the artist herself, her more recent works are more site-specific and function on the basis of an interaction with the architecture. Pixel can therefore be seen as both an extension of theatre and sculpture, but how does it expand the moving image?

There are multiple single-channel videos within the exhibition that screen Rist’s earlier time-based projects. A spatial and voyeuristic quality is given to the viewing experience of these videos, as the individual visitor is absorbed into a triangular structure

(fig. 2.12). Rob Perée equated the difference between viewing a one-channel video and a

multi-channel video as a transition from a temporal to a spatial experience (Westgeest 96).

In the case of Mendieta’s exhibition from section 2.1, all of her films were projected individually, emphasizing their time-based nature, flatness and frame. By substituting the frame for different surfaces or objects to project her videos on - like the floor, transparent sheets, or amorphic screens - Rist frees the video from its two-dimensional confines (figs.

2.11-2.15). Morse even argues that in installation art, the entire room becomes the frame.

Subsequently, “in perceiving a work one is occupying one’s own space; but that space is not separate—it co-exists with what is being perceived” (Ran 9). The technique Rist most often uses (in this and other exhibitions) to immerse the viewer is a two-channel video projected into the corner of a room. This way, one’s field of vision is entirely surrounded by the projections. Full of complex interlays, close-ups, and synthetics colours, Mercy, Worry and Sip are all projected in this manner (figs. 2.9 and 2.10). The viewer assumes the active role of switching their sight from the left projection to the right in order to find links between them.

Although its spatial qualities seem to surpass the experience of time, Morse states that video installation, “remains a form that unfolds in time - the time [...}, for the experience of a transformation to occur” (166). Video installation is thus tied to both space and time.

Although this unfolding of time and what Morse calls the “space-in-between” - “the actual construction of a passage for bodies or figures in space and time” - make it difficult to document and commodify video installations like Pixel, it also gives people a reason to experience imagery outside of the domain of their phones/laptops (154). The interconnectedness of each work in the exhibition spaces and the freedom to sit, lie down, or roam through them conjures a feeling of oneness, with the viewer becoming a part of the media ecology that takes form spatially and temporally. This is especially visible through the layered effect of the video projected onto sheets that people walk through, where another video that is projected into the corner of a wall can be simultaneously viewed (fig. 2.15).

Although all of Rist’s imagery seeps of her colourful aesthetic, she does not sentimentalize but instead intensifies (our experience of) nature. We “leave with a sense of encountering nature as never before” (Smith), which is perhaps exactly what a media ecology should aim to do.

I have argued that Pixel is a media ecology in the sense that each artwork is thematically and visually tied to the one next to it; the artworks flow and affect each other spatially. While

Rist previously used her body to express ideas of femininity, she turned her attention to creating immersive, technological environments that nevertheless express a sensual, feminine aesthetic and attitude towards nature that is closely in tune with ecofeminist ideology. By challenging the borders between technology and nature; viewer and artwork; museum and installation, Pixel is able to arouse a surreal and feminine way to relate to the natural world.

Whilst the visitor of Pixel becomes part of Rist’s media ecology, the visitor of Covered is transported back to the time of Mendieta’s performances. Covered is about the presence of Mendieta in time, whereas Pixel Forest is about the presence of the visitor in space. The form of the moving image - time-based or space-based - thus refers back to the core objectives of the artworks and allows for an expanding image of the female body in nature.

Chapter 3

An Affective Turn Towards the Non-human/Female Body

Affect theory in Media Studies brings the focus from the mind to the body. By combining affect theory with principles of new materialism, I redirect our attention from the representational and technological qualities - discussed in previous chapters - to those of the body, materials, and natural elements. With an affective turn towards the non-human body, I thus mean the artwork or natural materials. By focusing on the body and its senses, the affective turn opposes itself to the traditions of media studies, which have tended to theorize questions of the mind. Having gained momentum in the late nineties, the movement was accompanied by the material turn, which brings agency back to materials, objects, and matter. While feminist theory benefits from these turns in terms of their reconsideration of the agency of nature and the body, Elizabeth Grosz identifies a disregard for sensations specific to the female body in affect theory. She thus discusses female-specific corporeal experiences such as menstruation and childbirth in her book Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (1994). Moving into the 21st century, new materialism31 is considered by Nadine Levy to be a continuation of ecofeminist concerns - placing the non-human on the same level as the human and aiming to break down dichotomies between body/mind, nature/culture, female/male, etc. So, how are lens-based media employed to create affective encounters that pertain to the female body and corporeal experience?

Section 3.1 will combine new materialist thinking with Pepita Hesselberth’s notion of presence-effect from cinematic affect theory and Elsaesser’s ecological time, using works by

Sylvia Safide and Pauline Curnier Jardin to set these theories within the perspective of female corporeality. Section 3.2 will elaborate on goddess feminism - discussed in section 1.2

- in connection to different conceptions of aura by Benjamin and ecofeminist theories on the divine feminine. The role of the moving image in reconceiving the goddess in an affective manner will be analyzed through the work of Nina Paley and Tabita Rezaire.

31 New Materialism emerged in the early 21st century and continues the same concerns of materialism whilst becoming more interdisciplinary and bringing new insights into social production rather than the post-structuralist study of social construction.

3.1. From Passive Spectator to Active Material: The Female Corporeal Experience

A moving image is played and watched, a website is browsed, an exhibition is visited and a photograph viewed; all media are dependent upon a person to be activated or rather, affected. The passive spectator in turn, is affected through their encounter with the artwork.

Both the artwork and the spectator can be considered as “bodies” affecting each other during their encounter (Colman 8). The aim of this section is not to understand how the spectator’s body is affected by certain artworks, but rather to turn our attention to the material qualities, production process, and process of “becoming” that forms the ‘body’ of the artwork in a specific space. An analysis that is informed by new materialist and affect theories can enhance an understanding of what the artwork represents in terms of the human body and how the form and material affect its meaning in an embodied rather than passive viewing experience. Just as matter and material have always been dismissed as passive, moving image spectatorship has long been considered as an unembodied, immersive experience that only engages the mind. How can a combination of new materialist notions of active matter and affect theory’s notions of the body and sensorial develop a new understanding of the relation between the female body and nature? How do moving images in particular emit a material presence and produce an embodied, affective viewing experience?

I will firstly consider the latter question through a combined discussion of Pepita

Hesselberth’s concept of the presence-effect and Elsaesser’s notions of presence and ecological time. The time-based nature of Sylvia Safdie’s video art will function to explore these concepts as well as introduce new materialist thinking. Lastly, the sculptural materiality of installation in cooperation with the moving image will be explored through

Pauline Curnier Jardin’s Grotta Profunda Approfondita (2017).

In “From Subject-effect to Presence-effect: A Deictic Approach to the Cinematic,” Pepita

Hesselberth develops a way to conceive of the materiality of cinema, not as object but as presence. The ontology of cinema has been in a state of confusion since it fully transitioned into the digital world, having lost, “the image’s indexical grounding in a material object,”

which used to be celluloid (Hesselberth 113). As a solution to the absence of this material basis, Hesselberth therefore proposes the time-based presence of the moving image as its unique trait as medium. She states that this theory of presence is also adaptable to moving images outside of the cinema, such as the ones discussed in this thesis. In the context of the moving image in the museum, it is relevant to revisit Elsaesser’s idea of presence; all artworks presented in a museum have a “produced presence” or “thereness,” where the artwork is intentionally designed to stand out in the museum space (111). But although the presence of artworks is meant to provoke and affect the viewer in some way, Hesselberth grounds the significance of the experience of the moving image in its ability to produce an intensified feeling of the “here” (spatially), “now” (temporally), and “me” (as being an individual in the here and now).

As the moving image unravels itself in continuous movement, projected upon a screen or surface, Hesselberth argues that the viewer becomes more aware of their place in the here and now than in their daily life (“Here” 35). She explains this correlation between time, space, and the viewer as such:

The cinematic offers our lived body a specific way of being-in-the-world that is set

apart by its potential to thicken the present in the process of negotiation between a

technologically produced and a corporeal habitual time and space (113).

The word “thicken” I believe is used intentionally as a descriptive, tactile word that can also be used with regard to a material. Hesselberth suggests that not only a thickening of the present but also a thickening of time takes place in an encounter with the moving image.

The negotiation between the viewer’s body and the space and time of the moving image is also referred to by Mieke Bal as a “wavering,” which implies a state of constant change. It is not only the thickening of time that Hesselberth identifies as crucial to the cinematic experience, but also the fact that the, “thickening of time becomes tangible to our bodies” (114; emphasis added). This tangibility is developed through the film’s material unfolding in the moment of the encounter with a viewer, in its “coming into being” and “becoming”

(Hesselberth 114).

Although the negotiation between the body and the film’s temporal dimension is more pronounced in the narrative form of films shown in a cinema, where one has to adapt to the subjective time of a character, Elsaesser’s notion of “ecological time” is perhaps also a form of temporal thickening. In his use of this term, Elsaesser refers to artists that purposefully slow down the time of their films. Through an experience of “ecological time,” the viewer not only escapes the fast-pace of modern life, but I would say also becomes more grounded in the ‘here’ and ‘now’. In their wavering adaption to a slower temporal dimension, the viewer can become more present in the now and in touch with the material/natural world. As discussed in section 2.1, Mendieta’s films are connected to ecological time, not only because they are set in nature but also due to her body’s stillness, as if adapting to the same time of the slow movement of her surroundings, which is often water.

Sylvia Safdie’s interlinked series of videos, which superimpose an image of her nude body with separately recorded images of a stone and water, also imitate the “ecological time” and rhythm of flowing water (figs. 3.1-3.5). The female body disappears and reappears so slowly that it seems to merge seamlessly into the body of rock, in the process blurring the boundaries between the human body and non-human bodies of water and stone. The fluidity with which her body fuses into the moving water is, “tantalizingly liquid [and] tactilely wet”

(Stubley 21). Safdie brings these separate recordings together and, through manipulations of time and form, makes it seem as though their collision is natural (Lewis 44). The way in which the body is immersed in the water and encapsulated by the roundness of the rock in

Body/Stone/Water VI, conjures up an image of the womb (fig. 3.5). Like Mendieta, Safdie reflects upon the cyclical nature of life and death. Yet, what we see is not an infant but an adult female body. We may interpret this as a reflection upon the becoming of one’s biological sex, a female body, in the womb. In some videos, like Mendieta, she holds the same position throughout the length of the video (fig. 3.3). In others, the body’s movement is very slow or subtle, which also seems to work towards the slowing down, or thickening, of time.

This slowness also takes the form of the breath/breathing in Safdie’s work, which is related to both affect theory and new materialism; it is not only a corporeal action that the

viewer can become immediately aware of in their own body, but also in connection to the breathing in of air and the breathing of others around them. As a fundamental indicator of life, “breathing serves as an alternative form of relation that necessarily opens to the outside, to sensations and perceptions, and offers a direct molecular connection to others” (Kontturi

47). In her Body/Stone/Water series, I would suggest that breathing takes the form of the motion of water, which flows in and out of frame. The films themselves become alive and have a body-like presence; “they breathe, and invite onlookers to breathe with them” (Lewis

44). The internal, visceral rhythms of the film’s and viewer’s bodies thus start to imitate each other (Barker 21). In an undeniably sensorial way - through the tactility of texture, absence of sound, and slowing down of time and movement - Safdie’s video therefore offers a way of

“being-in-the-world” that is in touch with nature and its natural rhythms.

According to art theorist Katve-Kaisa Kontturi in “Moving Matters of Contemporary Art: Three New Materialist Propositions” (2014), essential to a new materialist approach to art is valuing the artwork’s “material becoming”. For Hesselberth, a film’s “material unfolding” and “becoming” refers to the temporal interaction between the viewer and the film. In new materialist terms however, the “material becoming” refers to the details and actions involved in the artist’s process. Much of Safdie’s process is hidden within the consistent movement and seamless flow of her works; “we witness its development but not the development of their making” (Lewis 44). And this is the case with most moving images, which, in a museum setting, cannot be paused in order to appreciate the details. The technology behind videos is usually quite clear, but Safdie does not reveal her editing process. They are thus like “paintings-in-motion,” as many layers of editing, like paint, cannot be distinguished but rather blur into the motion of the final piece (Lewis 44).

Although there is no sound, one can feel or sense the sound through the crashing and retracting of the waves, as if through a kinaesthetic experience (Lewis 50). Perhaps this is also due to the squiggly lines that Safdie adds into the videos, which not only add texture to the digital image but also seem to emit a kind of rhythm. Her manipulation of the image, its material becoming, echoes “the body’s transformational potential” (Stubley 25-26).

“Becoming” in the sense of material becoming, “refers to process ontology, which denies essential(ist) being and suggests that the world is always already moving” (Kontturi

45). In other words, an artwork is never truly finished and is always changing, also in accordance to its environment. A greater understanding of an artwork can therefore be developed by experiencing it in a physical encounter (Kontturi 47). Hesselberth seconds this notion in saying that, “the environment is recognised as actant in the construction of meaning” (25). In the following paragraphs, I will discuss an artwork that I have experienced, in order to reflect upon the work’s “ontological being – to the way it exists, or becomes, in the exhibition space” (Kontturi 47). Having already discussed the notions of temporal thickening, ecological time, and material becoming with regard to Safdie’s work, the focus here lies in exploring how film interacts with materiality in an exhibition space and works towards an expression of female corporeal experience. I have chosen Pauline Curnier Jardin’s

Grotta Profunda Approfondita (2017), a sculptural installation that includes two films, which

I encountered at an exhibition about new materialism called Restless Matter (2018), at the Cobra Art Museum in Amstelveen. The exhibition linked textured paintings from the museum’s permanent collection of the CoBrA movement with contemporary art objects ranging in media.32 The materiality of a painting or sculpture can be clearly seen and almost felt, but what do we make of the materiality of the moving image inside an installation and how does it “become” in the exhibition space?

The entrance to Grotta (the cave) is in the shape of a monumental, multicoloured hand. In the centre of this hand is an opening where a vertical, black and white film plays, which the viewer must pass in order to enter the “black box” screening the next film (fig.

3.6). Jardin’s interest lies in the search for the origin of human existence, culture and creativity as well as in (pre-)historical, female icons. The Grotta’s hand is modeled after the first proto-human Lucy and the films depict the visions of Saint Bernadette of Lourdes, who,

32 Grotta serves as a contemporary and feminist counterpart to Guiseppe Pinot-Gallizio’s Caverna dell Antimateria (1958-59), which is a cave composed of paint, in Restless Matter.

according to legend, saw the Virgin Mary in a cave.33 The films are very loose and surreal reimaginings of these visions.34

As the part of our bodies that we use most to create, feel and touch, the hand is an important recurring motif in this installation that refers back to the idea of the hand as the origin of culture:

Our hands form the link between the material world (with our hands we shape our

world, from the oldest cave paintings to the latest technology) and the spiritual,

which is mediated in religious ceremonies with hand gestures (Cobra).

It is thus also through the installation’s sculptural hand that the tactile materials of the cave - the material world - come together with Jardin’s films, which act as a gateway to the spiritual dimension of the installation. The films serve the same function to that in a cinema, which is to tell a story. However, the entrance of and experience of sitting in a cinema are quite different; Grotta makes for a more embodied, surprising and tactile way to relate to its story. This embodied experience is intently connected to female corporeality. The female body is materially and symbolically equated to the natural world in Grotta. The womb becomes a “grotto,” which is a cave but also what Jardin describes as, “a cozy, enveloping place hiding many things at the same time” (qtd. in Sirieix). Inside the mysterious cave, the visitor walks into an amorphous sculpture that lies in between the viewer and screen.

Forming into a small hill and crawling up the walls, the sculpture represents a placenta and umbilical cord (fig. 3.7).35 The viewer thus steps into a large womb, a cave of the origin of human life. The placenta is comprised of sand-like particles, which can be felt when sitting on the sculpture to watch an equally tactile and visceral film. The film features many close-ups of body parts, sensually slow camera movement, immersive sound, and is flooded in a blood red colour (fig. 3.8). Jardin designed the interior of the cave with warm colours and round shapes, “where the walls are not straight, where nothing is rectilinear, where from bottom to top everything is reversible” (qtd. in Sirieix). These curved, organic shapes

33 Curnier Jardin has also created work inspired by the female icons Virgin Mary, Joan of Arc and the goddess

Demeter from Greek mythology (Sirieix).

34 Although the films are seeped in representational meanings, most crucial for this discussion are the films’ formal qualities and the installation’s material presence.

35 Jardin states that viewers can also interpret the sculpture as a different organ.

correlate to the shapes of nature and matter, whereas the square and rectilinear are instead associated with photography, science, modern architecture and culture.36 The moving image in Grotta however, does not escape its rectangular, traditional form. It would have perhaps been more fitting for the screen to also take on an amorphic shape in order to adapt to the carefully designed environment of the cave, such as in Rist’s 4th Floor to Mildness mentioned in section 2.2 for example (fig. 2.14).

The presence of Grotta comes closer to Elsaesser’s description of a “produced presence” than Hesselberth’s “presence-effect”. Although it is the large, colourful hand that makes its presence known in the white-walled room of the exhibition, the temporal unfolding of the first film is what draws the visitor inside the cave. The time-based presence-effect of the moving image is thus more subtle and hidden in Grotta. Nevertheless, the story portrayed in the second film is enhanced by the sculptural installation, which does not distract but rather engages the viewer in active spectatorship whilst simultaneously pointing towards their corporeal existence in a world made of matter and material.

In this section, I have demonstrated how an awareness of the activity of material and matter can lead the spectator into a more embodied encounter with the moving image. Thus, the moving image becomes, “not merely a representational filter through which the ‘natural’ world is seen but also a means to create a participatory union between the artist, the non-human environment, and the viewer” (Dunn 381). Whereas the breath in Safdie’s work becomes an active symbol for temporality - we feel the passing of time when breathing - the hand in Jardin’s work becomes a symbol for materiality - we feel and touch materials with our hands. Although the material presence of the moving image in Grotto depended more on the sculptural nature of the installation, where Safdie’s work instead created presence through the thickening of time, the view of the passive spectator and passive material is transformed to one where both bodies are actively engaged and affected in the female corporeal experience.

36 Although the photograph has been standardized into the rectangular form in accordance with the art historical tradition of linear perspective for imagery, the lens of a camera and our field of vision remains circular.

3.2. From Iconic to Immanent: The Goddess in Movement

The goddess movement emerged in the seventies, thanks to a group of feminists who were dissatisfied with the prominence of the monotheistic, male god in historical and contemporary religions. Inspired by goddess icons originating from lesser known and unappreciated ancient and contemporary religions and cultures, the goddess movement seeks a reconnection with the divine feminine and resacralization of nature (Clarke 241).

Within the field of contemporary lens-based art, goddess imagery has been adopted by many female artists referred to in this thesis, such as Mendieta, Edelson, Long & Stent and Jardin.

How does the goddess engage with the moving image and what is the effect of a goddess in movement?

This section will analyze Walter Benjamin’s notion of the aura with respect to the moving image, in the process making connections to theories of affect in the field of film.

Nina Paley’s animation film Seder-Masochism (2018) will be used as a case study. Ultimately, I will argue that film can serve as a haptic platform on which the goddess can not only be reimagined in movement, but also reenforce an ecofeminist ethics of “becoming divine”. Tabita Rezaire’s Peaceful Warrior (2016) will lastly be analyzed with regard to its unique meditation upon these notions of the goddess, the divine, and immanence.

Film historian Miriam Hansen makes it clear in her chapter, “Aura: The Appropriation of a

Concept,” (2012) that the concept of Benjamin’s “aura,” famously conceived of through his text “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” (1935) has been wrongly interpreted as having only one meaning. For this reason, Hansen instead explores the

“conceptual fluidity of the term” and its multiplicity of meanings. Although she argues that the prevailing use for this concept is no longer relevant for contemporary research in media studies, I will employ this definition in order to demonstrate how the reproducibility of images through technological media can still result in a different way of looking or relating to a subject. Hansen defines the common conception of aura as, “an elusive phenomenal

substance, ether, or halo that surrounds a person or object of perception, encapsulating its individuality and authenticity” (106). There is a sense of distance between the art object and viewer, an astonishment at and/or worship of the object’s uniqueness and beauty, which has its root in tradition. The “halo” that Hansen describes is undoubtedly a reference to what

Benjamin sees as art’s historical connection to cult, ritual, and religion (Benjamin 6). Most religions form some kind of visual representation of their god(s) or goddess(es), which then also attains an iconic, auratic status. Goddess religion believes in several different goddesses from ancient and contemporary origin that each symbolize different aspects of the divine feminine (Clarke 241).37

Although some followers of the goddess movement take issue with the appropriation of goddess imagery from other cultures to further their own political and/or social agenda,

Paley embraces the freedom to extract images from diverse sources for artistic means

(Clarke 241). In her films, she recreates religious stories through her own animation as well as by adding external imagery and music to form a kind of remix. This capacity to remix audio, imagery and animation is a trait unique to the medium of film, which allows Paley to breathe new life and meaning into historical narratives. Most of her films reflect upon the suppression of the goddess(es) by patriarchal religions. Immanence, pantheism and non-hierarchy are integral features of goddess religion, since it opposes the patriarchal religious belief in one omnipotent, male “sky-god” (Graham 422). In the full-feature film

Seder-Masochism, Paley illustrates the suppression of the goddess through visualising violent events from the Book of Exodus, which are told by an animated Jesus and Moses (fig.

3.9).

In one scene, several prehistoric goddess statues are animated to seem as though they are dancing, while upbeat music repeats the phrase, “you gotta believe in something; why not believe in me?” (fig. 3.10). Alongside the freely accessible film, Paley also created accompanying GIFs of these dancing goddesses. Consequently, the once auratic sculptures of the goddesses become reproducible, humorous, web-based entities. Benjamin makes the

37 Although most goddess religion practitioners adhere to the idea of multiple goddesses, since the movement stems from a belief in the existence of a prehistoric goddess religion, the movement today is very widespread and diverse, encompassing many different ritualistic practices.

argument that photography and especially film are necessary agents in the destruction of the aura tied to art (22). This is due to their technological reproducibility, which results in the loss of uniqueness that is inherent to the aura. The GIF can be reproduced within just a few seconds, a process through which the once auratic sculpture displayed in a museum is reduced to a small moving image on a screen. The mere act of, “permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation” for Benjamin results in a,

“shattering of tradition” (4). And tradition is exactly what the goddess movement seeks to contest. By utilizing the accessibility of the internet and the reproducibility of the GIF, Paley brings goddesses closer to the contemporary realm and rids them of their aura.

Although film is considered by Benjamin to be completely absent and even the destroyer of aura, Hansen identifies a way in which the tactility of film and its closeness to dreaming correlates to the aura. Benjamin explained the experience of aura in art by equating it to an experience one might have whilst appreciating nature:

While resting on a summer afternoon, to trace a mountain range on the horizon, or a

branch that throws its shadow on the observer—this is what it means to breathe the aura of those mountains, that branch (5).

Hansen regards Benjamin’s reference to breathing as indicative of the aura being both a visual and physical experience. The term “aura” is linked to its Latin and Greek roots as, “a breeze, a breath of air, the air” (Wiktionary), which makes it synonymous with the action of breathing and earth’s element of air itself. Like a breeze, the aura cannot be avoided and can be felt through the body. As Hansen states, “aura is a medium that envelops and physically connects—and thus blurs the boundaries between—subject and object, suggesting a sensorial, embodied mode of perception” (114).38 The auratic experience is therefore not only a bodily and involuntary affect, but also materially links the art object with the viewer.

In this tactile version of aura, there are many similarities to the experience of watching a film. Vivian Sobchack and Laura Marks, who have written separate texts on affect theory in film, both recognize Benjamin’s thinking of the cinematic as tactile. Sobchack for

38 The word medium is here used in Benjamin’s understanding of it as an, “in-between substance or agency—such as language, writing, thinking, memory—that mediates and constitutes meaning” (Hansen 108).

example, mentions that Benjamin speaks of the viewer’s “mimetic faculty” (Benjamin 240), which refers to the human tendency to imitate and “a sensuous and bodily form of perception” (Sobchack 55). Marks points out in reference to Hansen that, “film’s particular indexicality allows it to attribute physiognomic qualities to objects, certainly endowing them with the auratic power to return the look” (Marks 334). This ability “to return the look” is an important element in realizing the agency of the art object or film and its non-passiveness during the affective or auratic encounter. The distinction between viewer and object are blurred when gazing at each other; they affect each other. This sensation is similar to that of dreaming, where there is, “an equation between me and the object. . . . The things I look at see me just as much as I see them” (Valéry qtd. in Hansen).

It is not only with other objects that the lines become blurred, but also with other subjects. Film has often been compared to the experience of a dream, in its darkness and fleeting intensity. With cinema, there is a strong sense of identification, which allows people to immerse themselves into a character. The clarity between subjectivity and objectivity in reality is lost in the “carnal” process of watching a film (Sobchack 65-66). In the embodied identification with the other, film can thus act as a powerful agent for the formation of an ethical relation to other subjects. In Seder-Masochism however, the animation stands in the way of this ethical relation, as it distances the subject from a more familiar reality.

Another issue with Seder-Masochism is its depiction of Mother Earth.39 Illustrated as a malleable female figure that transforms into other goddess forms and the earth, she falls victim to men who start chopping down her form as a goddess tree (fig. 3.11). Many feminists oppose the figure of Mother Earth, since it feminizes nature and depicts it as a vulnerable victim. Although this figure is used by the goddess movement and ecofeminism to sacralize the earth, it is also perpetuated by male-dominated environmentalism and capitalist patriarchy (Graham 136). By sustaining figures such as Mother Earth, goddess feminism is hence, “prone to an inversion of traditional gender stereotypes, enclosing women in a realm of unreconstructed ‘nature’ at the expense of empowering them to engage with new technologies” (Graham 419). The unreconstructed femininity of the goddess proves to be the

39 Mother Earth was personified by the goddess Gaia in ancient Greek mythology.

movement’s biggest problem in light of theorists such as Donna Haraway, who famously stated that, “though both are bound in the spiral dance, I would rather be a cyborg than a goddess” (68).40 Haraway utilised the genderless cyborg as an embodiment of her posthumanist ideology for western society in A Cyborg Manifesto (1984), consequently challenging the distinctions between humans/machines and the human/non-human. The dualisms between the spiritual/material and transcendent/immanent however, remain unresolved within Haraway’s secular cyborg writing (Graham 428). At least, that is what theologist Elaine Graham declares in her article, “Cyborgs or Goddesses? Becoming Divine in a Cyberfeminist Age” (1999). By applying feminist philosopher Luce Irigaray’s notion of

“the divine” to the goddess, Graham finds a way to contest the goddess’ destructive femininity and propose her as an additive to the cyborg in order to break down the barriers between material/spiritual and transcendent/immanent.41

I will briefly explain the main points of Graham’s argument before connecting this concept of immanence to film’s material aura. Firstly, it is worth repeating that the goddess serves as a reaction against the idea of transcendence that is associated with the monotheistic god of most religions. Immanence instead, puts forth the idea that “the divine” is present within all humans and nature. Moreover, it is something inside of us, “the Deep or True Self” that can be activated through the process of “becoming” (Clarke 241). Immanence asks us to rethink our relationship with spirituality as something within us, instead of external and detached, as well as our relationship with non-humans as intimately connected instead of separate or superior. However, an important aspect of this “becoming” is that it is connected to the material and our physical bodies: “We do not become divine by abandoning our bodies; we take our sexed bodies with us; ‘spiritual becoming and corporeal becoming are inseparable’ (Irigaray 1998:203)” (Graham 432). This view on spirituality brings it closer to the individual’s own agency. Graham also suggests that we need to recognize the sexual

40 Haraway’s use of the term “spiral dance” alludes to neopagan Starhawk’s book The Spiral Dance: a Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess (1979). 41 Several other theorists have also proposed a merger of the cyborg and goddess: Ingram, Penelope, “From

Goddess Spirituality to Irigaray’s Angel: The Politics of the Divine” (2000); Kailo, Kaarina, “Cyber/Ecofeminism

- From Violence and Monoculture Towards Eco-Social Sustainability” (2003); and Alaimo, Stacy, “Cyborg and

Ecofeminist Interventions: Challenges for an Environmental Feminism” (1994).

difference of our bodies, as Haraway’s gender-defying cyborg is a utopian project too detached from our current society. Of course, Irigaray’s hypothesis of ‘becoming divine’ is also quite utopian, but perhaps not as radical or unfeasible. Ultimately, Graham proposes that we need to rewrite “ecofeminism’s mother goddess” in a manner where, “the maternal and the feminine is not idealized or objectified but reconfigured on women’s own terms”

(433). This rejection of essentialism and simultaneous embrace of the female body serves as the basis for Graham’s new approach to the ecofeminist goddess.

Film’s tactile quality, its deconstruction of the boundary between object and subject, and encouragement for identifying with ‘the other’, can perhaps lend itself towards an

“immanent ethics,” where, “ethics is not separated from being or becoming: it is the modality or the manner of becoming, how and in what directions becomings occur” (Grosz qtd. in

Bell 242).42 Ethics are closely tied with the idea of “becoming divine,” since this suggests reaching one’s best potential. Moreover, the Stoics believed that, “ethics is immanent in life itself, in human and non-human life (Grosz 242).43 Irigaray’s notion of the divine paired with the goddess (of nature) seems to suggest that we need to look towards nature, in which ethics is inherent, in order to reach “the divine”. Furthermore, we should not look up to a transcendent god or “perfect being,” but rather develop ourselves through the process of becoming (Graham 434). By using film as a medium to explore the goddess, artists can develop a different relation between object and subject in a tactile manner. I am not suggesting that film can spawn a “divine becoming” in the viewer, but there is a possibility to confront the viewer, through corporeal and auratic engagement, with ideas of the immanent divine. Affecting our senses through tactile visuals, film can therefore reach the body, which is the “threshold of transcendence” (Graham 432).

Rezaire’s Peaceful Warrior (2016) is an example of an artistic and filmic engagement with the goddess, divine becoming, and ethical immanence. Her five and a half minute video explains how to become a peaceful warrior in seven different steps: decolonial self care, kinetic yoga, meditation, womb power, decolonial diet, radical self-love, and holistic healing.

42 Elizabeth Grosz here refers to the theories of the pre-Socratics, Spinoza and Deleuze.

43 Stoicism is a philosophy of personal ethics informed by its system of logic and its views on the natural world (Wikipedia). In this interview, Elizabeth Grosz also states that, “some people consider this religious thought, but for the Stoics and Spinoza, this is not an order separate from the world for it is inherent to it”.

By imagining herself as a goddess, Rezaire positions “the divine” within her own body, to be activated through the process of healing. Becoming a peaceful warrior requires an ethics of peace and an active betterment of the self that Rezaire suggests resides in ancestral knowledge, the knowledge of the womb, and within nature. These three notions combined form an ethical immanence; the concept that ethics is inherent in nature and our bodies, but that perhaps needs to be rediscovered within us. She thus shares her seven “soul aligning technologies,” transporting the viewer into different digitally manipulated worlds whilst humorously imitating the form of an informative ‘how-to’ video (Rezaire qtd. in Radley). I will focus on the “decolonial self care” and “womb power” aspects of Peaceful before discussing the significance of the womb in Sugar Walls Teardom (2016). Rezaire most resembles a goddess in the “decolonial self care” segment, where she wears a gold gown in a desert setting and is surrounded by animated snakes (fig. 3.12). The symbolism of the snake links her representation to ancient depictions of the Minoan snake goddess, which is one of the dancing figurines from Paley’s Seder-Masochism. The snake is also the first thing present in the opening shot of Seder-Masochism, where it hypnotizingly spirals out of the centre of the screen, which becomes the womb of the goddess that proceeds to give birth to the snake and all of life on earth (fig. 3.13). This shows the interconnectedness of the snake - as a symbol for fertility - with the female body, the womb and its cycle. The snake spiral can refer to the infiniteness of this natural cycle as well as the circularity of life and death. This spirals us back to the connection between water and the womb in Safdie’s work (section 3.1) and further to Mendieta’s Ochún (section 2.1), which is named after the Santería goddess associated with water, purity, and fertility (Bria).44

Mendieta’s sculpted female figure in the shape of two separate lines also strongly resembles two swimming snakes (fig. 2.1). Paley, Safdie and Mendieta’s works are all different artistic approaches to expressing similar themes of ancient wisdom, the goddess, circularity, water, and/or the womb, which Rezaire brings together in Peaceful. In the “womb power” segment, Rezaire dances in front of a microscopic image of purple cells while the phrase “release your yonic power through womb movements and

44 Santería is an African Diaspora religion centred in Cuba.

unapologetic pride” and a spinning halo of uterus symbols appear on screen (fig. 3.12). The womb is a motif that recurs throughout Rezaire’s oeuvre; the works in her solo exhibition

Exotic Trade (2017) were arranged in the shape of a womb and her video Sugar Walls Teardom reflects upon the historical use of black, slave women’s bodies for the advancement of gynecology. The latter includes a scene where Rezaire sits in a yoga pose with her legs stretched outwards while an animated waterfall crashes from behind her, fish swim underneath her, and a cosmic sphere surrounds her (fig. 3.14). Holding this position while the digital environment around her moves, she recites:

The womb used to be celebrated within cosmologies all over the world as the creative

force of the universe. They try to erase our powers, but deep down within each of our

wombs, we know. Because our wombs are what connect us to the earth and the

universe.

Here, Rezaire refers to the erasing of ancient knowledge systems celebrating the feminine, which is similar to Paley’s claim that the figure of the goddess has been historically suppressed by patriarchal religions. The ideological connection between Paley and Rezaire is also very apparent through a section of Sugar that overlays a sphere of changing images of ancient goddesses on top of a scrolling google image search of childbirth (fig. 3.14). Rezaire and Paley both use goddess imagery as evidencing the existence of ancient knowledge systems that honored the (divine) feminine.

Mother Earth however, is not presented as literally in Sugar as in Seder-Masochism. Rather than depicting the earth as a victim, Rezaire selects the powerful image of a volcano to signify the “womb of the earth” (fig. 3.14). A volcano is dangerous and full of fire, but can also form land and historically produced the rise of oxygen levels needed for the evolution of oxygen-breathing life forms to take place (Penn State). In a way, Rezaire elaborates upon Jardin’s metaphor of the cave as a womb - as a space where humans first started acting upon their creativity - by connecting the womb to the volcano, which signifies creation in the broader sense of the creation of life on earth. The image of the volcano therefore presents the viewer with the notion of the womb as a vital centre for creation whilst also acknowledging its power, rage, and ability to destroy. This polarity - the ability to both

destroy and create - is also present in the snake, which can both heal and poison. By portraying herself as a snake goddess as well as connecting the womb to the earth, Rezaire therefore creates an empowered vision of the female body in connection with nature. Ultimately, Rezaire tries to reconnect the viewer to the “womb-mind” - the concept that the body thinks - in an age where the disconnection from the body through digital technologies reigns.

Benjamin’s notion of the aura was used in two ways: to explore the iconic status of the goddess and its representation in the film and GIFs from Seder-Masochism, and to link Hansen’s conception of the aura as a physical experience to the affective experience of watching a film. In blurring the distinctions between subject and object, this material aura of film was analyzed for its potential to put forth an immanent ethics that shows the interconnectedness between an individual and the objects/subjects that surround and affect them. Graham’s use of Irigaray’s notion of immanence and divine becoming is able to blur the lines between the material/spiritual and transcendence/immanence. Realizing that the figure of the goddess and mother earth needed to be re-conceptualized by women in order to rid ecofeminism of its essentialist tendencies of femininity, Rezaire’s work on immanent, divine becoming through use of goddess imagery was analyzed. Rezaire’s videos free the goddess from her iconicity, aura, and stillness; portraying herself as a goddess in movement, she instead offers an immanent ethics of eco-goddess femininity that is in touch with nature and the (female) body.

The moving image allows artists like Paley, Jardin and Rezaire to create a narrative surrounding the experience of the female body. Through their symbolism, they also equate the natural processes and forms of the female body to that of nature - Jardin’s cave, Rezaire’s volcano, and Safdie’s rock. Overall, in this affective turn towards the non-human/female body, I have argued that the moving image plays a key role in reconceptualizing the relation between the female body, nature, and material.

Conclusion

Nature, technology and the female body were shown to merge in this thesis, as nature recurred in the form of landscape, site, or symbol; lens-based technology provided the basis for the artwork’s material form; and the female body held the mind of the artist. The significance of the lens-based medium with regard to its aesthetic, tracial, time-based, spatial, or material nature was examined in its effect upon the ecofeminist expression of the woman-nature relation. By using technology associated with the human distanciation from nature, the presence of an overarching theme of the human instead of specifically female relationship to nature was identified. Nevertheless, emphasis was placed upon the specificity of the female body, its representation and experience whilst also addressing issues of essentialism, generalization, and the goddess.

Ultimately, this thesis has set out to determine the potential of the ecofeminist lens.

Even though adopting a gender-aware ecocriticism proved challenging, I have identified some crucial connections between developments in lens-based media and the image of the female body in nature. In chapter one, photography was proven to play an important role in adding a conceptual layer to the documentation of land art as well as empowering female artists to reclaim the art historical trope of the nude in nature. Its possibilities for creative framing were used by Mendieta to magnify the meaning of her ephemeral siluetas. Other artists were shown to adopt a specific photographic approach in order to differentiate their aesthetic from that of pictorialism.

In consideration of Smithson’s concept of non-site in section 1.1, I found that

Mendieta’s still photography could also be seen as non-performance, drawing our attention to the absence and trace of her performance through the image. Putting these performances back into motion however, through serial photography and film, breathes new life into

Mendieta’s artwork. This transition from still to moving was mirrored by the introduction of the moving image into the museum in chapter two. This transition shattered the illusion of stillness in life and allowed art to reflect on the slower tempo found in nature - the ecological time. In the case of Mendieta, her photography and films work together in the museum to

highlight different aspects of her earth-body works. The potential of the time-based moving image in the expression of ecofeminist concerns was continued in discussion of Safdie’s work in section 3.1.

Firstly however, the expansion of the moving image was taken further, into space.

The space-based moving image created opportunities for a different kind of spectatorship, where Rist’s approach was to immerse the viewer into her carefully curated media ecology.

Rist’s work provided a strong contrast to that of Mendieta’s but also a chance to reflect upon how the museum space can act as a (natural) site itself. Whereas Mendieta’s art clearly outlined the/her own female body, Rist’s expression of femininity often took on a more subtle form, through her colourful aesthetic and way of representing nature through a digital filter. Rist’s video installations drew the visitor’s attention to an alternative way of experiencing nature as well as a different method of representing the female body in nature.

Rist’s sensual expression of the experience of nature flowed into affect theory and new materialism’s emphasis upon the agency of the (non-human) body in chapter 3. The material presence of the moving image was explored through, on the one hand, the thickening of time, and on the other hand, through the experience of film inside of a sculptural installation. The affectivity of Jardin’s films was enhanced by her sculptural installation inspired by the anatomy of the female body. The female body in Safdie’s films became one with a rock and water, reflecting on the womb and thus the cycles of life and death. In section 2.2, the womb returned in analysis of Rezaire’s goddess-infused video art, whose work exemplified the transition of the goddess, from iconic and auratic to immanent and accessible. I argued that film acts as a key tool to represent the goddess’ immanence, reconceive of her femininity, and rid the figure of its ties with essentialism.

By applying the ecofeminist lens to these themes of photographic representation, the moving image in the museum, and the affective turn, I have found that lens-based art plays an important role in the expansion of the image of the female body in nature. To endow this image with more complex meanings related to time, cycle, the body, the womb, immanence, etc. is to break the image free from its association with essentialism and develop more critical insights into the ever-changing relationship between humans and nature.

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Illustrations

1.1 Melanie Bonajo, Matrix Botanica – 1.2 Sheba Chhachhi, Jamuna, 2007. 1.3 Shana Moulton, Whispering Pines 10, Biosphere about Nations, 2013. 2018.

1.4 Robert Smithson, Spiral Jetty, 1970, (photo Gianfranco Gorgoni).

1.6 George Baker, diagram from Photography’s Expanded Field, 1.5 Robert Smithson, A Nonsite (Franklin, New Jersey), 1968. 2005.

1.7 Ana Mendieta, photographs from Siluetas series, 1973-1977.

1.8 Ana Mendieta, Untitled, Silueta series, 1973-1977.

1.9 Paul Gauguin, When Will 1.10 Édouard Manet, Spring, 1.11 Henri Matisse, detail from 1.12 Frida Kahlo, Self Portrait You Marry?, 1892. 1881. The Parakeet and the with Thorn Necklace and Mermaid, 1952. Hummingbird, 1940.

1.13 Herbert B. Turner, In the Sunlight, 1918. 1.14 Anne Brigman, Soul of the Blasted Pine, 1906.

1.15 Rimantas Dichavičius, Water and Solar 1.16 Mary Beth Edelson, Goddess Head, 1.17 Ana Mendieta, Untitled (close-up), Game, Rings Between Rings series, 1974. Calling series, 1975. Silueta series, 1976-1978.

1.18 Mary Beth Edelson, photographs from Woman Rising series, 1973.

1.19 Honey Long and Prue Stent, Rhinestone Kelp, 2019. 1.20 Honey Long and Prue Stent, Banana Slug, Phanta Firma series, 2015.

1.21 Sandro Botticelli, Birth of Venus, 1485. 1.22 Honey Long and Prue Stent, Venus Milk, 2015.

1.23 Laura Aguilar, Nature Self-Portrait #1, 1996. 1.24 Laura Aguilar, Nature Self-Portrait #7, 1996.

1.25 Laura Aguilar, Grounded #106, 1992.

2.1 Ana Mendieta, film still from Ochún, 1981. 2.2 Installation view of Covered in Time and History: The Films of Ana Mendieta, Gropius Bau, Berlin, 2018.

2.3 Installation views of Covered in Time and History: The Films of Ana Mendieta, Jeu de Paume, Paris, 2018.

2.4 Installation view of Covered in Time and History: The Films of Ana Mendieta, NSU Art Museum Fort Lauderdale, 2016.

2.5 Ana Mendieta, film still from Creek, 1974. 2.6 Ana Mendieta, film stills from Sweating Blood, 1973.

2.7 Ana Mendieta, film still from Energy Charge, 1975. 2.8 Ana Mendieta, film still from Blood Inside Outside, 1975.

2.9 Pipilotti Rist, installation views of Pixel Forest (2016), Mercy Garden (2014), and Worry Will Vanish (2014), Pixel Forest, New Museum, New York, 2016.

2.10 Pipilotti Rist, film stills and impressions of Sip My Ocean, 1996.

2.11 Pipilotti Rist, installation view of 2.12 Pipilotti Rist, installation view of 2.13 Pipilotti Rist, installation view of

Mother (1996), Pixel Forest, New Museum, one-channel videos, Pixel Forest, New Administrating Eternity (2011), Pixel New York, 2016. Museum, New York, 2016. Forest, New Museum, New York, 2016.

2.14 Pipilotti Rist, installation views of 4th Floor to Mildness (2016), Pixel Forest, New 2.15 Pipilotti Rist, installation view of Museum, New York, 2016. Administrating Eternity (2011), Pixel Forest, New Museum, New York, 2016.

3.1 Sylvia Sadie, film stills from Water over Stone, 2002.

3.2 Sylvia Safdie, film stills from Body/Stone/Water II, 2010.

3.3 Sylvia Safdie, film stills from Untitled III, 2010.

3.4 Sylvia Safdie, film stills from Untitled IV, 2010.

3.5 Sylvia Safdie, film stills from Body/Stone/Water VI, 2010.

3.6 Pauline Curnier Jardin, installation view of Grotta Profunda Approfondita (2017), Restless Matter, Cobra Museum of Modern Art, Amstelveen, 2018.

3.7 Pauline Curnier Jardin, installation view of Grotta Profunda Approfondita (2017), Restless Matter, Cobra Museum of Modern Art, Amstelveen, 2018.

3.8 Pauline Curnier Jardin, film stills from Grotta Profunda Approfondita, 2017.

3.9 Nina Paley, film stills from Seder-Masochism, 2018.

3.10 Nina Paley, film stills from You Gotta Believe, 2018.

3.11 Nina Paley, film stills from Seder-Masochism, 2018.

3.12 Tabita Rezaire, film stills from Peaceful Warrior, 2016.

3.13 Nina Paley, film stills from Seder-Masochism, 2018.

3.14 Tabita Rezaire, film stills from Sugar Walls Teardom, 2016.