Of Space and Time: Film and the Female Performer

The practice-based thesis investigates the question of representing a female space-time through a visualevocation of interiority and female subjectivity by creating a form of haptic ‘cinema’. My practice draws on the concept of haptic visuality in order to explore an embodied immersive filmmaking. The films explore the notion of a feminine image as a form of subversion of the dominant phallocentric discourse, proposing alternative modes of visualities. The thesis examines visualising these different modes through film installation by examining slow motion, the sensory experience of wind and water, surface and textures, circularity and manipulations of time and space.

The practice examines and experiments with the theories of Luce Irigaray in order to explore representing a female imaginary and interiority.The films explore the figural gestures of the body, inspired by Irigaray’s notion of the retouche, investigating how this could embody a female subjectivity and an alternative language and space-time.The thesis proposes an interior space-time through the use of slow motion and circular time in order to reconfigure and re-vision a female subjectivity.

Using the medium of immersive film installation,my research re-visions images of women from film and dance history, particularly focusing on the early twentieth century work of Isadora Duncan and Loie Fuller. In this,my practice explores an intermedialspace between cinema, dance, stillness and movement to propose the female body as one of crossing, spiralling, and invoking multiple temporalities and liminalities. The thesis culminates in the proposition that an Irigarayan female time-space, as generated through haptic visuality, is one of a becoming through movement and the elemental. The research contributes to the field of moving image installation by exploring the spatiality of the haptic to inscribe a female language thatmoves away from notions of objectification.