PhEminist collaging exploration
Prompted by the phEminist mapping exploration this session invited a physical response through an ‘invitation to feel, touch, share and transform’ (Renold: 2018, 19). The focus of the physical response was to use collage as a feminist research method (Coleman: 2009; Raaberg: 1998), a process born out of modernist strategies for ‘subverting the dominant Western tradition and effecting a new consciousness’ (Raaberg: 1998, 153). Such methods have links back to the DADA art movement and the feminist artist Hannah Höch where the perceptions of society were turned on their head as a response to World War I.
Using similar ways of working, the YWAs were asked to respond to a selection of media images in whatever way they chose. The images used were A2 sized boards left over from a MAC advert campaign and subsequently gifted to the department. Although MAC campaigns often subvert traditional ideals of beauty, by using androgenous models and queering heteronormative make-up application, the use of MAC images was not pre-specified, but rather a serendipitous opportunity that occurred at the same time as the research. All the materials in the art room were made available to the YWAs for their physical responses to the images, including paints, spray paint, varnish, pens, string and various papers. There were no guidelines about what materials they should use, or about how they should use them. The only restriction was time, which was limited to the duration of one-hour.
Using similar ways of working, the YWAs were asked to respond to a selection of media images in whatever way they chose. The images used were A2 sized boards left over from a MAC advert campaign and subsequently gifted to the department. Although MAC campaigns often subvert traditional ideals of beauty, by using androgenous models and queering heteronormative make-up application, the use of MAC images was not pre-specified, but rather a serendipitous opportunity that occurred at the same time as the research. All the materials in the art room were made available to the YWAs for their physical responses to the images, including paints, spray paint, varnish, pens, string and various papers. There were no guidelines about what materials they should use, or about how they should use them. The only restriction was time, which was limited to the duration of one-hour.