House Arrest Katharine Sarah Fry PhD Art Goldsmiths College, University of London 1 Declaration of Authorship I, Katharine Sarah Fry, hereby declare that this thesis and the work presented in it is entirely my own. Where I have consulted the work of others, this is always clearly stated. Signed: ______________________ Date: 28/05/19 2 Acknowledgements My most special thanks to Myrtle for the cherries that made this possible and for showing me always imagination is life. Special thanks to the Fry Foundation for their constant support through the adventures of Grizelda. Thanks to: Ceri Hand for gently telling me that the way forwards was back in Venice. Nina Danino and Saskia Olde Wolbers for their sensitivity to my practice. Catherine Grant for her care, enthusiasm, strategic thinking and generosity of knowledge. Sigrid Holmwood, Kristien Van den Brande and Scott Raby for helping the voiceless find words. Pete Mackenzie for his eternal generosity in building my projects and giving me a home. Ivan Coleman for his eternal generosity, armchair advice and studio magic. Giulia Damiani, “it’s not can or cannot, it’s do or don’t so do!” for the Eurodisco magic and pranzamore. Rebecca Ribichini for all the crisis-busting video chats and laughter. Nina Wakeford for her guidance and generosity. Kristen Kreider for being an empathetic leader, a generous reader and putting the hug in PhD. Love always and thanks to: Jolene Attard for the boundless enthusiasm. Luke Bennett for the shamozzle. Lisa Hevey for sharing temples of light and dark basements. Helen Mackenzie-Carmichael for the years of care and footplay. Sara Myers for the ever- expanding intimacy. Sarah Sigal for all the kneeplay from the first iteration of my Phd to now. Charlotte Staunton for being an ever-present rock. Monica Velarde for the days by the pond and the long-distance psychoanalytic soundbites. Jennifer Wexler for all the adventures, kindness, encouragement and lessons in growing. And the days on the Malecon and the nights on the dancefloor that were equal parts driving force and decadent distraction. 3 Abstract This thesis is directly informed by my video practice. My videos, produced between 2015 and 2019, show a female figure performing a limited series of gestures in relation to a set of objects and a containing space. I ask why the figure keeps appearing. My answer: she is under house arrest, which I define as an animate subject’s inability to experience a living return to a primal inanimate state, to the lost wholeness of an originary home. Her desire to return is contained, under compression, by the surface boundary of her skin. I elaborate on a house arrested subject in relation to my practice and through specific works by three artists: Lili Dujourie’s black and white video Sonnet, 1974, Francesca Woodman’s series of black and white house photographs, and Jayne Parker’s black and white 16mm film K., 1989, looking to each for strategies to return home and, in the frustration of each of their attempts, reveal three moments of house arrest. I read each strategy through a psychoanalytic framework, built on close readings of Freudian texts. The precision with which I unpack specific terminology in each text, to draw out any theoretical problems or discrepancies and to elaborate the condition I call house arrest, constitutes the original contribution of this research. Key examples of this textual analysis are: the distinction between inertia as a tendency and a property in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” the temporal and spatial difference between the former heim of the womb and “once upon a time and in the beginning” of “The Uncanny,” the contradiction between the sensation of eternity and the threat from the external world in Civilisation and Its Discontents, and the nuances of the forms of 4 repetition Freud conceives in “Beyond the Pleasure Principle,” “The Uncanny,” and “Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through.” 5 “As from a star I saw, coldly and soberly, the separateness of everything. I felt the wall of my skin. I am I. That stone is a stone. My beautiful fusion with the things of this world was over.” – Sylvia Plath, Ocean 1212-W, 1962 “Because you see it's the monotony that's got to me Every afternoon like the last one Every afternoon like a rerun … And I got something to hide here called desire I got something to hide here called desire And I will get out of here…” – Patti Smith, Piss Factory, 1974 “Do you think this feeling can last forever? You mean, like, forever ever? Forever ever… Forever ever… Forever ever…” – Desire, Under Your Spell, 2009 6 Table of Contents Acknowledgements ....................................................................................................................... 3 Abstract ......................................................................................................................................... 4 Table of Contents .......................................................................................................................... 7 List of Illustrations ......................................................................................................................... 9 Introduction: House Arrest ......................................................................................................... 11 Pre-Loved and Ex-Display ........................................................................................................ 11 Midas Touch ............................................................................................................................ 14 Practice Overview ................................................................................................................... 15 Key Themes ............................................................................................................................. 18 Rationale ................................................................................................................................. 34 Chapter Summaries ................................................................................................................. 40 Chapter One Lili Dujourie’s Sonnet: Rehearsing Inertia ............................................................. 43 A Fidget in Time ...................................................................................................................... 43 A Length of Tape ..................................................................................................................... 46 Fighting the Problem With No Name ...................................................................................... 50 External Ideals ......................................................................................................................... 54 Preferring Not To .................................................................................................................... 58 A Subject of Loss ..................................................................................................................... 64 Life as a Masterplot................................................................................................................. 67 Screening Failure ..................................................................................................................... 69 An Inert Subject ...................................................................................................................... 75 Rehearsing a Return ................................................................................................................ 81 I could stay here forever and I would never die. But like the flowers I would never have been alive., 2015 .................................................................................................................................. 87 I can sing a rainbow. Sing along with me., 2018 ......................................................................... 90 Chapter Two Francesca Woodman’s Houses: Merging with a Lost Heim .................................. 93 Staging Immurement .............................................................................................................. 93 In Gothic Ruin ........................................................................................................................ 103 Uncanny Returns ................................................................................................................... 111 Back to Mother’s Home ........................................................................................................ 119 Ambivalent Dis/appearances ................................................................................................ 127 The Arresting Skin ................................................................................................................. 131 d.a.n.c.e. f.o.r. y.o.u.r. d.a.d.d.y., 2017 ..................................................................................... 133 Tablemouth, 2016 ..................................................................................................................... 136 7 Chapter Three Jayne Parker’s K: A Separating Skin .................................................................. 139 Surface Tensions ................................................................................................................... 139 A Separating Skin .................................................................................................................