Bissell, Laura (2011) The female body, technology and performance : performing a feminist praxis. PhD thesis. http://theses.gla.ac.uk/2474/ Copyright and moral rights for this thesis are retained by the author A copy can be downloaded for personal non-commercial research or study, without prior permission or charge This thesis cannot be reproduced or quoted extensively from without first obtaining permission in writing from the Author The content must not be changed in any way or sold commercially in any format or medium without the formal permission of the Author When referring to this work, full bibliographic details including the author, title, awarding institution and date of the thesis must be given Glasgow Theses Service http://theses.gla.ac.uk/ [email protected] The Female Body, Technology and Performance: Performing a Feminist Praxis. Laura Bissell M.A. Hons., MPhil. Submitted in fulfilment of the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Theatre Studies College of Arts University of Glasgow September 2010 2 Abstract This research project examines the relationship between the female body and technology and analyses how contemporary artists are exploring the creative and political potential of technologies within their performance practice. By interrogating the culturally constructed gendering of technologies and theories of the female body through contemporary feminisms, this study shows how by working against existing patriarchal structures surrounding bodies and technology female artists are developing a technologised feminist praxis. The artists that I focus on throughout this thesis acknowledge, challenge and attempt to subvert dominant and conventional applications of the technologies, and therefore I read their work as feminist. This study analyses a range of types of technology and their applications in contemporary performance practice including: immersive technologies, digital and analogue technologies, the Internet, biotechnologies and cyborg technologised performance. Within each of these chapters the technologies are analysed in relation to the performing female body and I apply critical theory to enable me to read these works as ―hybrid‖ and as illustrative of artists working within a ―cyborg consciousness‖ to explore alternative political modes. This project is informed by the work of cultural critic and feminist theorist Donna J. Haraway whose ―Cyborg Manifesto‖ (1985) altered the landscape of feminist discussions surrounding the technologised female body. Her utopian manifesto evokes the cyborg as a creature of social fiction and social reality and calls for a re-coding of bodies and approaches to political thinking. I argue in this thesis that the artists I am investigating attempt a re-coding of female bodies and of existing gender conventions surrounding bodies and technology to develop a new cyborg feminist praxis. 3 Table of Contents Abstract ..................................................................................... 2 List of Figures .............................................................................. 6 Acknowledgements ........................................................................ 8 Author's declaration ...................................................................... 9 Introduction ............................................................................... 10 Scoping the Field ....................................................................... 10 Research Questions ..................................................................... 14 Methodology ............................................................................. 14 Feminism and the ―Body‖ ............................................................. 18 Debates Surrounding Essentialism .................................................... 21 Feminist praxis .......................................................................... 23 Feminist ―Texts‖ ........................................................................ 23 Gender and Technology ................................................................ 25 Cyberfeminism .......................................................................... 28 Chapter Synopsis ........................................................................ 31 Political Potential of Performance ................................................... 34 Chapter One - Immersive Performance as Feminist Praxis ....................... 36 Introduction ............................................................................. 36 Immersive Virtual Reality .............................................................. 37 Conventional and Non-conventional Use of Virtual Reality Technologies ...... 38 Experimentations with VR in Performance .......................................... 42 Brenda Laurel Placeholder (1993) .................................................... 44 Char Davies Osmose (1995) ............................................................ 52 The Act of Naming ...................................................................... 57 The Role of the Senses ................................................................. 60 Gender and Technology ................................................................ 62 Nature and Feminism ................................................................... 66 Space and Gender ...................................................................... 68 Conclusions .............................................................................. 73 4 Chapter Two - Live and Virtual Bodies: The Uncanny Double in Performance. ............................................................................................... 77 Introduction ............................................................................. 77 Freud‘s Uncanny ........................................................................ 78 The Uncanny in Contemporary Performance ....................................... 83 The Double ............................................................................... 84 Dixon‘s Digital Double .................................................................. 86 Psychoanalysis and Performance ..................................................... 88 The Uncanny and Performance ....................................................... 90 Anita Ponton ............................................................................. 91 Caroline Smith ........................................................................... 96 The Performing Female Body as Uncanny .......................................... 100 SUKA OFF tranSfera (2007) ........................................................... 103 Conclusions ............................................................................. 115 Chapter Three - Performing Bodies in Virtual Spaces ........................... 118 Introduction ............................................................................ 118 Feminism on the Net .................................................................. 119 Online Performance – Towards a Definition ....................................... 123 Avatar Body Collision (ABC) .......................................................... 125 Audience ................................................................................ 128 Screen Save Her (2002) ............................................................... 132 Belonging (2007) ....................................................................... 136 Upstage .................................................................................. 149 Conclusions ............................................................................. 156 Chapter Four - Productive/Reproductive Bodies: The Female Biotechnological Body in Performance................................................................... 160 Introduction ............................................................................ 160 Feminism and Biotechnologies ....................................................... 162 subRosa .................................................................................. 164 Expo EmmaGenics (2001) ............................................................. 168 US Grade AAA Premium Eggs (2002) ................................................ 179 Kira O‘Reilly ............................................................................ 184 ―Marsyas: Running Out of Skin‖...................................................... 186 5 inthewrongplaceness (2005) ......................................................... 190 Conclusion: Production/ Re-production ............................................ 206 Chapter Five - Hopeful Hybrids: The Female Cyborg as Grotesque in Performance ............................................................................. 211 Introduction ............................................................................ 211 The Grotesque.......................................................................... 213 ―The Cyborg‖ and the cyborg ........................................................ 216 Julia Bardsley .......................................................................... 219 Aftermaths: A Tear in the Meat of Vision (2009-10) (A hybrid reading) ...... 222 Meat ..................................................................................... 222 Cyborg/animal/hybrid ................................................................ 224 The Book of Revelations .............................................................