Cyberfeminism thoughts and Victoria Sin

At this juncture I would like to point out how many of the recent readings felt quite out of my comfort zone, however it was interesting nonetheless in trying to grapple with many of the topics shown and by the end, even though I may have difficulty in grasping the points raised, having to google instead how other people have condensed the points of the concept and their thoughts on it to better understand the concept for myself. Similarly, I encountered this problem quite directly in Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto. In itself, it is quite a heavy read and since i never really delved into reading up about feminism in the past, I had to engage in some catching up on the current scene of feminism before starting on this week's topic in order to have a more comprehensive understanding of the landscape and history before moving on to learning about how it was changed or revolutionised. 

The more interesting aspect of this topic was however learning a lot more about the landscape of cyber feminist and the works that they have done in contribution to the cyberfeminst movement.
In particular, the reading on post cyberfeminism highlighted to me the artist Victoria Sin, that i attempted to include in our group's first exhibition concept on femininity, seeing as to how she seemed to be a remarkable example of reconstructing her own femininity through critiquing the lens of the male gaze.

VICTORIA SIN



In her dealing with the construction of femininity, she also deals with the notion of non-genderconforming, also shown in another of her projects, 'Rouge Agents', where she explores in a series of blog posts the mainstreaming of drag culture and alternative representations of femininity. Thus, she explores the television series "Rupaul's Drag Race" and the Subversive and Feminist potential of Drag. Which, on a tangent, i found extremely interesting given that I had watched snippets of the show before and found it humorous but never really gave much thought to it as an art form or having deeper explorative potential.

(EDITED in FUTURE)

Although we are no longer focusing on our original concept on the 'dementia of femininity', i would like to revisit Victoria Sin's performance piece "Narrative Reflections on Looking" and briefly apply the constructive critique model on it as i felt that i did not do her work justice in our presentation.
http://victoriasin.co.uk/index.php/nrol/prefacelooking-without-touching/

Response
Her works immediately caught my eye in their vibrant, striking and explicit nature in which she commands attention of the space and captivates attention. The three part series is chilling and left me feeling almost uncomfortable in being in such close quarters in observing the body and face of Victoria is such close proximity.

Description
Narrative Reflections on Looking features Sin dressed in glamorous evening gowns, dressed scantily and face painted in thick drag makeup, narrating a story about desire and what it means to consume an image. The colours include vibrant washes of bright red in the preface, pink in part one. As we transition from the preface to parts one two and three, the audience moves in closer to examining Sin from afar to panning across her body, to closing in on her face and her eyes, looking straight into her soul. The titles of the individual parts are as follows, preface "Looking without touching", Part one "She was more than the sum of my parts", Part Two "The reprise of Cthulu" and Part Three "Cthulu through the looking glass". All are narrated by Victoria Sin in a slow, almost sensual and chilling way, almost like a hushed whisper. 

Analysis and Interpretation
This performance piece invites us to evaluate how we view women, in an objectified manner, that is almost invasive, bringing in the concept of the male gaze and how they "look" at women. Dressing in drag as a women, performing femininity, this invites the question of what it means to perform femininity, in the over exaggeration of of feminine characteristics. In using video as a medium of performance, this enables all audiences to explore Sin from close quarter that one cannot do in real life and to construct a mediated spectacle that invites us to consider the constructed nature of appearances and not taking things at face value. The use of "Cthulu" is the titles is also reminiscent of Donna Haraway's "Cyborg", a monster that deconstructs and reinvents.

Evaluation and Judgement
Aside from what I saw and felt upon first viewing the performance piece, analysing it invites us to also consider who she was addressing in her narration as she targets a specific 'you' and in the next she shifts to her own perspective of 'me' against a 'she', yet it seems that she is not talking about herself but rather is positioning it as such that the 'me' is the viewer and the viewer is invited to position themselves in the space with sin herself. At the end, this is conflated through the line 'pushing my face into hers', with the final shot of sin's face. In my opinion, we are invited to see through Sin's eyes as we position ourselves in her shoes and become 'her', considering her place as a female playing drag over exaggerating femininity behind a camera and behind a screen, closing up this virtual distance to physically experience the true meaning of femininity.