I really want my work to have a strong element of physically engaging my audience. My favourite thing about my previous work with the peep-hole boxes, was what it made my audience do, and how it made other people want to peep too when they saw others peeping. Adding another layer of voyeurism. I don’t necessarily have to work with a peep-hole, but really need to start experimenting more with visual methodologies.
I thought of perhaps using a magnifying glass, to magnify the reflection of your eye when peeping. So your confronted by the reflection of just your enlarged eye.
Here is an image of Wills enlarged eye. I think zooming in on the eye reflects the visual stimulus of porn. It is quite confrontational and alarming too.
Although this next image is quite amusing, the magnification of the lips, comments on the whole tittilation of the lips, and erotic fantasies, and fetishes.
Here is the research I did on titilation of the lips, and fulfilling fetishes:
Freud (1927) in discussion over fetishism states that no,
‘male human being is spared the terrifying shock of threatened castration at the sight of the female genitals’ ‘fetish is a penis- substitute’ (Freud, S. (1927). P201).
He suggests that the origin of male fetishes come from a fear of castration, and that subconscious thought processes replace the lack of phallus in a woman. For if a woman cannot be castrated then the fear of castration is diminished (Freud S. (1927). Edward L. Bernays, Freud’s nephew became famous for his promotional campaigns for the cigarette brand: Lucky Strike. He studied his uncle’s theory on fetishism and put it to the test in cigarette adverts. He created images that referenced the titillation of women’s lips when smoking on a cigarette, (replacing the lack of phallus). The campaign was hugely successful mainly because of its subliminal nature (Christine Strotmann. 2013).
I have been looking for the subject matter of what my audience may look into, and what they will see. I want to experiment, and hopefully find a material that can be both projected onto as well as reflective. Because then I can combine my audiences own reflection, with some sort of imagery that is suggestive of the porn industry. The image above of wills lips has inspired me to look and magnifying lips, and perhaps taking videos of magnified lips. The audience could then be looking in onto videos of magnified lips, or perhaps other body parts, as well as their own reflected magnified eye? These are all things I want to experiment with. However I need to be careful not to objectify women in my work, and somehow stay true to what I believe and commented on in my previous work.
Bibliography
FREUD. S. (1927). Fetishism (J.strachey, Trans.) The complete psychology works of Sigmund Freud (Vol. XXI, pp. 1470157) London: Hogarth and The Insitute of Psychoanalysis
CHRISTINE STROTMANN. (2013). Edward L. Bernays (1891–1995).Available: http://www.transatlanticperspectives.org/entry.php?rec=145. Last accessed 19/01/15.
lilyvanlennep 