White Body

The key research questions I address in this work are: firstly, What forms of écriture feminine emerge by/with/through the intuitive performance of stop motion animation?; secondly, How do memories of play in early childhood affect and inform the evolution of intuitive practice-as-research in/of/with the feminine?; and thirdly, Which qualities, such as materiality and jouissance, identify the practice as feminine and/or feminist? The research is practice-led, and comprises a series of seven animated performances ‘to camera’. To create the work, I manipulated modelling clay, sugar and dust with my fingers under the animation rostrum camera to explore my early childhood memories of secret, transgressive play; seeking to liberate a cascading feminine sensibility through the process of working ‘intuitively’ frame-by-frame with materiality and digital technologies. I have conducted a rigorous process of development and refinement, and have presented the film at many public events and engaged in discourse with a range of audiences, in order to test ideas and further refine insights and critical aspects of the work. ‘White Body’ seeks to make an innovative contribution to knowledge of feminine creative practice in animation and the ways in which femininity may be embodied in and expressed through practice. Evidence of its value may be seen in the wide impact of the film, and its success in attracting a range of international curators and artists’ moving image organizations, including Lumen, the Nunnery, and London Short Film Festival in the UK, and Directors Lounge in Germany. The writing I have undertaken, in response, follows the suggestion by Luce Irigaray that femininity ‘may be recovered only in secret, in hiding’, andl investigates the relationship between the moving image screen, feminine pleasure and the body, through critical reflection as an artist film-maker, and offers an emerging theorization of creative practice and femininity.