Going on from our textual responses to the artwork in class, we have decided to continue with this response to initiate the core starting point to our final performance. However instead of creating fictional stories solely from our imagination, we will be coinciding research on feminist theory, the history of the art, the artist, and how society respond to the position of women in a patriarchal society.
By giving the artwork an authoritative voice we are able to capture the ‘hidden content within [the] museum’ (Garoian, 2001,p.241) enabling us to generate a detailed account of unspoken. ‘The performance of autobiography… represents the memories and cultural histories which viewers bring- to museum culture, the personal, anecdotal knowledge by which they create narratives to represent their experiences of art.’ (Garoian, 2001,p.241) To respond to art in this way is to unravel the hidden content of the artwork which is disruptive to the museums dominant historical pedagogy. ‘Viewers’ personal narratives represent speaking in the first person, acting out one’s subjective knowledge, which is contrary to the third person narratives that are constructed by the museum that speakfor the viewer.’ (Garoian, 2001,p.241). The museum visitor plays a vital role in developing the story of the artwork in front of them, by layering their ‘performances of memory and cultural history’ (Garoian,2001,p.242) to the artwork the viewer allows themself to transform within museum culture, to create an identity based on their respective cultural perspectives. In our performance we aim to already give an account of personal experiences through research into feminists work and through further research into the artists and the piece of artwork itself. Through incorporating our stories of the past with stories already apparent to us in the artwork we are able to create verbal analogies and metaphors to represent our perceptual experiences; ‘by putting visual images into words, they enable the artworks to speak’. (Garoian, 2001,p.242) We aim to create a durational piece, in which we will all stand on plinths facing the wall, each taking it in turns to speak what we have written, as if we were the women in the artwork that was previously on exhibition in the same room. We feel tackling such a controversial issue: (Feminism) in the museum gallery space will allow us to spark thought within the viewer and enable them to re-act, whether they agree with what we are saying or not. We feel by working in such an intimate and silent space we have the opportunity to voice such an obvious yet discreetly masked topic within the gallery space, by acknowledging these visitors and invading their space, through the use of voicing the untold.
Works Cited:
Garoian, Charles, (2001) Performing the Museum, Studies in Art Education, 42 (3) p.234-248.