[-empyre-] Artwork #10: Jemima Stehli - She Looks Back — Jemima Stehli naked, films If Lucy fell, Ze Dos Bois, Lisbon 27/11/09

[Daniel Lichtman]

And, while I'm here! I wrote this response but forgot to send last week:

-I feel compelled with this work more than some others (though I
always feel this compulsion) to state exactly what I see. Here this
partly means enumerating who can see whom.
-The setup of this video is so simple, but it’s premise creates so
many generative questions—particularly about relations of power
between people unseen.
-A Portuguese indie rock band is playing a concert in front of an
audience. A camera is lying on stage before the concert starts; the
viewer sees through the camera. At the start of the concert someone
picks up the camera—according to the work’s title it’s the artist, and
she’s naked, but we never see her. Then, through the perspective of
Jemima’s camera, we watch the concert. Closeups of men’s strong arms,
legs, feet, bodies. Closeups of jerky movements will the performers
‘rock out’, fingers twisting knobs, a lead singer yelling into the
mic.
-band = sexual
-never see audience, and never see Jemima, despite her presumably
significant physical presence on stage.
-who is looking at who? Audience at Jemima, Jemima at Band, band at
Jemima (maybe), viewer at band (via Jemima), viewer at
screen/monitor/projection
-all of these relations of looking intersect at the artist and her
body as she operates the camera.
-as viewer I feel intensely connected to: the artist, as I look
through her camera, and the audience, who sees the artist. I’m
EXTREMELY aware of the act of looking and being looked at (so many
people in this piece are participating in both). And ACUTELY involved
in the EXTREMELY gendered forms of looking.



On Sat, Jul 21, 2018 at 7:12 AM Daniel Lichtman <danielp73 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Jemima Stehli
> She Looks Back — Jemima Stehli naked, films If Lucy fell, Ze Dos Bois, Lisbon 27/11/09
>
> Video Link: https://vimeo.com/188895395/10a8a93df5
>
> Jemima Stehli, born 1961, lives and works in London. She recently exhibited in the ‘Performing for the Camera’ exhibition at Tate Modern, London. Recent solo exhibitions include Focal Point Gallery, Southend-on-Sea; Arta, Milan; Galerie Raum mit Licht, Vienna and Vegas Gallery, London