Haptic visuality in Jane and Louise Wilson and Salla Tykkä

Abstract for the panel ‘The Discursive Space of Artists Film’, Association of Art Historians Conference, Glasgow 2010.

Haptic Visuality in Jane and Louise Wilson and Salla Tykkä.

This paper will put forward ‘haptic visuality’ in artists film as a counter space of reception. Jane and Louise Wilson’s work has been read in terms of the spectacle of panoptic visuality. Instead, I maintain that the stereoscopic juxtapositioning of images in their early multi-screen installations engenders an embodied affective experiencing of space, which operates both in conjunction and disjunction with spectacle and power. Likewise, Salla Tykkä’s film Lasso has been read in terms of the empowerment of the female gaze, which counterintuitively repeats the mastery associated with the panopticon. I shall argue that the film, in its camerawork and framing, lends itself to a haptic visuality that takes the viewer beyond binaries of form/content, vision/tactile, male/female.

Various critical themes have shaped AAH conferences in recent years, and provided a focus for disciplinary self-reflection. We seek to continue in this reflective spirit, but rather than organise the conference thematically, the 2010 conference is a general one from which different themes are expected to emerge.