„Abnormality, Deformity, Monstrosity: Body Transgressions in Contemporary Visual Culture” (original) (raw)
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2013
With the inception of the "freak show" in the late 19 th and early 20 th centuries, deformity, physical abnormality and unusual facial features were sensationalized into entertainment spectacle, covertly managed, constructed and displayed for the macabre amusement of sideshow visitors and audience members. Due to the historical manipulation and fabrication of freaks' bodies by sideshow and Odditorium managers to heighten or diminish their "freakish" qualities, the freak show can be conceptualized as an aesthetic space. By framing these social events as an aesthetic space, it is possible to analyze and deconstruct these bodies in the same way a work of art is appraised and valued. A freak is made, rather than born, and the physical elements that constitute freakishness are entirely dependent on the cultural norms and values of the time. Thus the cultural category of a freak is both historically and socially contingent. Through this aesthetic lens, I examine the visual culture of freak shows in order to interrogate the methods of representation employed by sideshow managers. These methods neither disrupted nor subverted the culturally coded conceptions of normality or deformity but, rather, reinforced them. Managers utilized exoticism or aggrandizement, falsified life-story pamphlets and visual chicanery to deliberately separate the audience from the freaks as objects of amusement and maintain social hierarchy. As the nineteenth century wore on, however, freak shows lost their cultural currency, which can be seen as the result of developing anthropological theory and medicine where spectators began to pathologize the deformed body.
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2007
In this essay I explore a possibility of experiential synthesis of the medicalized abnormal body with its aesthetic images. A personal narrative about meeting extreme abnormality serves as an introduction into theorizing aesthetic abnormality. The essay builds its argument on the phenomenological grounds; I therefore approach corporeality with Edmund Husserl and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. In turn, Max Ernst introduces an aesthetic frame for the subsequent examination of uncanny surreality. Two exemplars of the surreal body, Joel Witkin’s “Satiro” and Don DeLillo’s “Body Artist,” intend to substantiate the preceding theoretic. The study shows how the encounter with the abnormal embodiment may suspend normalized modes of constitution to provoke uncanny experiences
2020
This thesis project examines the interrelationships of Weimar Körperkultur ("body culture"), interwar photographic practices broadly known as "Neues Sehen," and Verist "Neue Sachlichkeit" painting to interrogate visual representations of bodily difference in Weimar media and art. Through close analysis of select case studies in Weimar film, photography, and painting, I argue that the lines between aesthetic, sociopolitical, and bodily deviance are blurred by many artists of the period. Such focus on the body as the site of an intermedial, interdisciplinary debate about aesthetic, social, political, and national "values" has historically been overlooked by scholars. I ultimately argue that certain "reactionary" figures (namely Franz Roh, Christian Schad, Otto Dix, and others associated with "mimetic" forms of interwar art) used non-normate embodiments to radically contest Körperkultur norms, the visual language of physiognomy, and the proto-Fascist eugenic legacies from which they emerged.
Masses, Medicine and Race. The Biopolitics of Monstrosity in Third Reich Propaganda Films
View. Theories and Practices of Visual Culture, 2017
Author examines body politics in Nazi cinema and propaganda movies (medical short films and materials filmed in the Polish ghettos) in terms of constructing visual identity of nation in opposition to the allegedly non-normative bodies of Jews and mentally ill persons. Author connects the visual material with notions of biopolitics (Foucault, Agamben, Esposito).
The Body and its Representations: Uncanny Embodiments of Modernity
The International Journal of Arts Theory and History, 2013
In this paper, I am investigating the body as an area of the discourse, a site of the multiplicity of events, an object of transference—a space where wills and powers become activated, the historical realities set in motion, and endowed with meanings. I have encountered two types of historical narratives investigating the artistic responses taking form of the grotesque, uncanny, and surreal handling of the body. The first type takes form of the first-person account, and relies on retelling, describing, and elucidating the psycho-physical realities. The second type is told from the point of view of the observing subject. It presupposes clear subject/object division. Through the second type, the attempt is put forward to comprehend the perceived body by giving it unity together with symbolic relevance, and by classifying the multiplicity of perceptual information into categorical groupings that lead towards the understanding of the particular as a segment of the general pattern. Rather than looking into these two types of narratives as enclosed unities, these paper examines “zones of intensity”, and perceptible ambiguities occurring through their representational activation. Keywords: The Body, Conceptual Framing, Power of Representation, Modernity, Ideals, Displacement, Rational and Irrational The International Journal of Arts Theory and History, Volume 7, Issue 1, pp.31-42. Article: Print (Spiral Bound). Article: Electronic (PDF File; 317.378KB).
VISUAL TRANSFORMATION OF THE NORM: TOWARD THE DIANE ARBUS' 'FREAKS SHOW'
This paper describes the photographic heritage of Diane Arbus in the context of visual overcoming and transformation of the norm. Interest in what most people would call outcasts, misfits and freaks as an accepted theme of the underground culture finds a new semiotic interpretation in the artist's work. Inspired by Tod Browning's cult horror movie Freaks (1932), which featured an array of marginalized physical disabilities, Arbus creates her own freaks gallery (A Jewish giant at home with his parents in the Bronx, N.Y., 1970, Mexican dwarf in his hotel room in N.Y.C., 1970, A naked man being a woman, N.Y.C., 1968 etc.), in which she tries to overcome the stereotypes and prejudices in perceiving Otherness. By refusing classic voyeuristic position of the observer, the artist shortens the distance between the Author and the Character, transforming the visual notions and icons of traumatic experience, decomposing the concept of the norm. Strong personal relationships between the artist and her models remove any tension and moral disgust. The full-face photos of the freaks and strong narrative author's statement indicate models' autonomous normalcy. Arbus' particular outlook allows the viewer to rethink the very concept of flaw, which is fixed with the camera and the artist's imperturbable common sense. She is not just gazing at the social outcasts, weird and wonderful characters, but trying to get acquainted with them, to respect the otherness of the other. Her camera removes taboos from the forbidden and shocking social and cultural themes. The photographer does not exploit low-lying human emotions. Through the visual representation of dismembered bodies in varying levels of intimacy, she finds true Beauty, rethinking modern ethical and aesthetic norms.