A cinematic performance installation investigating the role of the care giver as a gendered experience.
In 1977 Laura Mulvey made Riddles of the Sphinx, a film investigating her own work on the male gaze. She set out to explore and create a feminist language for cinema outside of traditional narrative norms. The film has very little narrative and concentrates on the gender politics of domestic life. It uses 360-degree pans which move slowly and without any pleasurable focus on the women characters. Though Mulvey’s essay is often referred to, her film is not, even though it heralded a pivotal moment in feminist cinematic dramaturgy.
Using Mulvey’s and other feminist filmmakers’ techniques THE RABBLE will create an event that looks at the role of the care giver. The camera not used as a tool to enhance the auteur’s gaze, but instead focusing on the small tasks of the care giver, a cup of tea made, a nappy changed, a breast feeding, a strong arm changing the sheets beneath the weight of a frail body.
It aims to decimate the traditional uses of the camera in live performance and search for a new kind of dramaturgy.
