Hybridization: the process in which pre-existing elements are re-arranged in new configurations forming an “hybrid”. The state of a “hybrid” is not stable and isn’t fixed because it depends from which point of view we look at it and in which context we place it. In a biological discourse, the process of hybridization is important because it increases the genetic variety (number of different gene combinations) within a species, which is necessary for evolution to occur. (Encyclopedia Britannica Online, 2015).

During this process certain elements will be integrated, transformed and others will be rejected.

Hybridization s is also present in a metaphorical way also the field of arts. We tend to speak about hybridization in arts as the process of fusing different media and genres into new forms of artistic expression as well as the act of transcending the boundaries between art and research, art and social/political activism, art and pop culture. Edmond Couchot in his essay “Media Art : Hybridization and autonomy” offers useful insight into the new art form that flourished the last thirty years using a process of hybridization that he define as “the crossing between heterogeneous, semiotic and aesthetic elements” (Couchot, 2005, p.1). Several artists already around the sixties and seventies were interested exploring a hybridization process as a way to find new possibilities of expression and communication. The blending of different artistic media and disciplines was in the core of the Performance art that emerged as an alternative way for artists to explore philosophical, political and social aspects of human existence, identity and activity.

The process of hybridization that interests me in this research regards the field of (art) photography and performance (art). The practice of making pictures becomes part of the daily routine. The gesture of photographing, pressing the shutter release becomes a daily repetitive action through which we construct and inform our reality, re-present ourselves to the outside world, communicate with the others, contribute to the construction of a global visual language. On the other hand performance art, based on the process of making, is characterised by its openness towards hybridization and the blurring of life and art dichotomy; an approach deriving from a shift of social values, concept of aesthetics and historical understanding of cultural, social and political issues concerning the human existence.

While my research proceeds I started wondering what kind of “hybrids” could emerge from the process.  So I decided to turn my focus  to two basic elements:

The Camera (photography) and the “Body”. What comes out  when these two elements are somehow fused.

In performance art we find artists like

a) Stelark: artist who has visually probed and acoustically amplified his body and used robotics or other relatively modern technology integrated with his body. For example, in 2007, Stelarc had a cell-cultivated ear surgically attached to his left arm. According to Stelarc, the ear project is not meant to be shocking, but rather it: “Brings into question notions of the wholeness of the body and also confronts society’s cultural perceptions of life with the increasing ability to manipulate living systems.”( – See more at: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/news/news-articles/0802/08022003#sthash.LDou8EY9.dpuf )

b) Iraqi-born Wafaa Bilal  who had surgery to implant a camera in the back of his had so that he could take pictures. The camera was mounted on three posts attached to a titanium base inserted between Bilal’s skin and skull. The camera had been taking a photo every minute as part of a year-long project (“The 3rd I”). However his body rejected the implant and the artist was forced to make another surgery to remove them.

c) Neil Harbisson, a color blind artist who spent years looking for a way of experiencing the colors of the world around him. Neil has been wearing an external electronic eye that picks up the frequencies of the colors before him and converts them into sound vibrations that he can hear. Initially he wore the device outside his head. But later, the London-based artist convinced surgeons to implant the chip int his skull to be able to perceive more intricate colors.

During my process I found very interesting  the idea of “in-bodiment” of an external object and the different simple way that this can occur.

Photographic camera it’s a powerful object not only because allows and enables us to take pictures but also:

– Camera in a certain way gives a position of power to its beholder. It unction as a weapon with which you choose a target and shoot. This reminds me the picture of the 4 years old Syrian child who according the photojournalist Osman Sagirli”surrendered” when the he pointed his camera at her because she assumed it was  a gun.

-The position of holding a gun and holding a camera is very similar: both associated with hunting like Flusser describs when he writes about the nature of a camera using specific “hunting” terminology, just as Susan Sontag had . Sontag  wrote about conquering and capturing in terms of aggression and Flusser directly refers to her’s basic assumption. In “The Gesture of Photography” Flusser states: “If one observes the movements of a human being in possession of a camera (or of a camera in possession of a human being), the impression given is of someone lying in wait. This is the ancient act of stalking  which goes back to the paleolithic hunter in the tundra. Yet photographers are not pursuing their game in the open savanna but in the jungle of cultural objects, and their tracks can be tracedthrough this artificial forest.”(Flusser 2007: 33)

“The camera doesn’t rape, or even possess, though it may presume, intrude, trespass, distort, exploit, and at thefarthest reach of metaphor, assassinate—all activities that…can be conducted from a distance, and with some detachment.” Susan Sontag p.13

-Camera is face- oriented and at the same time it hides photographer’s face. Behind the camera s/he can have control, s/he can see but not seen, like a mask.

-Camera as asexual metaphor, represents the photographer’s phallus while the lens is the extension of the male gaze. Very often during a photo-“shooting”,photographers will use expressions as “make love” to the camera.

So what would happen if the camera is not anymore face-related, leaving the face of the photographer exposed and open to a more equal dialogue.?

Probably because of my female sex immediately came to my mind to use as point of reference my vulva- vagina.

L’Origine du Monde (The Origin of the World) –Gustave Courbet

In a male dominated society vagina often:

• seems to be reduced to a subjugated and objectified status.
• is subject to the male gaze and used as object to look at. 
• is still a taboo body part.

But also vagina:

• is symbol of fertility and birth.

…………….

Bringing together these elements, I tried to  make this Vulamera: a camera that will be placed in the zone of the vulva and will function as a camera obscura in order to take pictures.

Which will be Vagina’s point of view? What will change in the relationship between the photographer -performer (* From now and on I will use the term photoformer as a combination of these two roles) and the photographed subject? what kind of exposure is taking place ?

Taking in consideration that the death of photography is something  often proclaimed:

• When we look at such photographs, the subjects either are dead or will die someday.
• When we look at the photograph we look at something that has been.  Roland Barthes. “In the final analysis, what I really find fascinating about photographs, and they do fascinate me, is something that probably has to do with death. Perhaps it’s an interest that is tinged with necrophilia, to be honest, a fascination with what has died but is represented as wanting to be alive.” Camera Lucida, Roland Barthes.
• photography as a process that represents a kind of death caused by objectifying the human being.  “I have become Total-Image…Death in person…they turn
  me, ferociously, into an object.”
• “Photography is the inventory of mortality…. Photographs state the innocence, the vulnerability of lives headingtoward their own destruction, and this link between photography and death haunts all photographs of people” Sontag, On Photpgraphy, p.70
  
• As the fascination that photographs exercise is a reminder of death, it is also an invitation to sentimentality.Photographs turn the past into an object of tender regard, scrambling moral distinctions and disarming historical judgments by the generalized pathos of looking at time past.” Sontag, On Photpgraphy, p.71.
  

I believe that with the Vulvamera we could  speak about the birth of photography and looking at the photograph to associate it with life instead of death.

So with Vulvamera:

– The photoformer:

1. expose her vulnerability.
2. doesn’t hide behind the camera.
3. doesn’t have the absolute control.
4. “inbodies” the process of taking a pictures by wearing it. A part of it is inserted in the vagina.
   
5.  open’s a dialogue with the photographed and share the responsibility for the output-photograph.

– The Vulvamera:

1. celebrates the  re-birth of photography.
2. is simply made/constructed using old technology.
3. produces only 1 image.
4. produces miniature photo: small size.
5. uses the original method of making photo -writing with light : pinhole with photosensitive paper.
6. is not located to the face and close to the brain like the eyes but to the centre of the body.
7. is related to the productivity and fertility – therefore the “fourth eye” instead of the “third eye” associated to spirituality.
8. is unique but not authentic.
9. is pacifistic: doesn’t “shoot” the subject but “reflects” the subject

Process of making the Vulvamera

The Vumvamera consists of two parts:

– internal body: pinhole camera made by recycling material. I used the container of strips for blood test and a needle 0,23 mm, aluminum   and black tape.

In order to calculate approximately the focal lenght, diameter of the pinhole, f/stop, ISO of the paper and other info, time of exposure, I visited mainly the site:

http://www.mrpinhole.com/ and I watched several tutorials in youtube.

– external body made by molding and casting my vulva (and partially of vagina).

I used dental alginate  and plaster paris to make the master  and then I used latex to make a relatively thin, elastic, a bit flexible casting. The problem is that latex doesn’t support its own weight so I need to find a way to fix it on my body. During the process , several mistakes happened – the alginate dried until to make the casting with latex rubber (two days later- the alginate tends to shrink- therefore the size is much smaller than the size of my vulva/vagina). So I need to make it again.

Pinhole photography and DARK ROOM.

In the meantime I started practicing pinhole photography using information on sites, youtube tutorials and the book: Eric Renner, Pinhole Photography, edition 4 ,2009.

I did a DIY dark room in the bathroom without windows, using cheap material /recycling (except the chemicals which I bought- too soon to start with alternative methods).

And here some outcomes of the last 5 days:

MINIATURE PINHOLE PHOTO:

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Notes on Gesture :  Giorgio Agamben

Etymologically gesture is defined as  a word that comes from Medieval Latin gestura (“a mode of action”), from Latin gerere (“to bear, reflexive bear oneself, behave, act”), past participle gestus.

In philosophy:

“By the end of the nineteenth century, the gestures of the Western bourgeoisie were irretrievably lost”:Giorgio Agamben  (1992- essay, “Notes on Gesture.”

According to Agamben at some point nervous and frantic gestures became the norm  so that “everybody had lost control of their gestures and was walking and gesticulating frantically.” The loss of  gesture coincided with the emergence of the cinema and the overwrought effort  to reconstitute the vanished realm of meaningful movements and to recover or record what has been lost. In cinema  the gesture is its basic expressive element. Especially silent cinema will be the primary medium for striving to evoke gesture in the process of loss.

Deleuze will break down the image to movement-image.

According to Agamben the gesture is: a type of action (Varro) but it’s neither about making (facere), producing or action (agere) but instead it is about enduring and supporting. It’s not a means in view of an end nor without a means. It’s a means as such.

“Hand Catching Lead” [1968]

Notes from: Flusser V., Towards a philosophy of Photography, (1983)

III. Apparatus.

Origin: early 17th century: Latin, from apparare ‘make ready for’, from ad- ‘towards’ + parare ‘make ready’.

Apparatus:

• is an object which makes itself ready for something: predatory characteristic.
• informs the object
• simulate human organs
• have resource to science
• people act as function of them
• there are intentions hidden within it
•   it is a toy that simulates thought and is so complex that the person playing with it cannot comprehend it;  What make the camera becoming a game is the program, the software. The apparatus hols  power  over the photographer: it programs his gestures. “A philosophy of photography must reveal the fact that there is no place for human freedom within the area of automated, programmed, and programming apparatuses, to show a way in which it is nevertheless possible to open up a space for freedom.” 
• what the photographer does is to look for information to be realized in a photograph; he tries to find hidden or undiscovered virtualities in the camera program that enables him to find a new information; he is within the camera.

Before the industrial revolution the man was surrounded by tools which worked in function of him; after the industrial revolution the tools that become machine are in the center surrounded by men who works in function of the machine. Therefore we have a new relationship where  man and apparatus form a single form – unit. Indeed Flusser never  separates a writer from the typewriter, a painter from the brush and canvas, or a photographer from the “apparatus.” Ever the phenomenologist, he is unwilling to separate an object from the consciousness that intends it.  He observes the movement — in this case the movement of a photographer around a human subject — as a dynamic interplay between subject and object.  He arrives at the conclusion that photographing is a way philosophising, without language. (http://www.nancyannroth.com/?p=214)

 

IV. GESTURE OF PHOTOGRAPHING

Photographing for Flusser is the gesture that allows to the person to search for undiscovered possibilities within the camera program, to look for images as yet unseen, for informative, improbable images. (p.26). At least he speaks about this kind of photographing.

Photographing : Hunting: the gesture of taking photo is like the gesture of hunting, where the photographer and the camera function a single unit. The gesture aims to find new unseen situations; it is  a post-industrial gesture ( post-ideological and programmed)

While hunting, the photographer moves from one space-time category to another, and he combines the various space- and-time categories while on the move. His hunt is a game of combining the space-time categoreis of teh camera, and what we see when we look at a photograph is precisely the structure of that game, not the structure of the photographer’s cultural condition- at least not immediately. (p.24)

It looks like that the photographer is free to make choices but according to Flusser, that his intention is linked and functions according to the camera’s program: programmed freedom.Within the gesture of taking a photo, the camera does what the photographer wants and s/he does what the camera is programmed to do.

The photographer needs to manipulate and regulate the camera – “conceptual” gesture >linear thinking. He must translate his concept into the camera’s program>photo=image of concepts.

Photographing is

anti-ideological : it search for many different points of view.

programmed action: post- industrial act.

The final decision is required by the photographer who pushes the button.

VII. The reception of Photography

 Today everyone ones a camera and makes pictures. Even if they are built according to complex scientific and technological principles, they are quite easy to use. HE who holds the camera can make  excellent photo without being aware of the inner complexity of the camera and the process occurred after pressing the shutter release.

The distinction between and amateur and true photographer is that the first doesn’t seek to make “new” moves/photos and to produce information that is not seen before ; s/he will prefer using the automatic procedures that the camera offers in order to enjoy making snapshots; s/he produce redundant pictures: photographic mania – eternal reproduction of sameness/similarity- addiction-obsession; s/he is devoured by the camera, and he becomes the camera’s extended automatic shutter release. His behavior is an automatic function of the camera itself. p.42). Production of memory and not of information.

The true photographer is interested in finding new ways of seeing and producing new informative situations.

In the past text explained images. In the post-industrial age happens the opposite: photograph illustrates i.e. newspapers article.

Now is the image that dominates.

 

Notes from: The transformative power of performance, Erica Fisher Lichte.(2008)

Chapter 2.Performativity and Performance.

“Performative”:

• term coined by J.L. Austin> language philosophy (1955): Linguistic utterances serve not only to make statements but they also perform actions.
• Distinction between constative utterances and performative utterances.
• Performative utterrances are self-referential and constitutivel they bring forth the social reality in which they referring to.
• Speech involve transformative power.
• Performative utterances are made under social conditions and they are addressed to a community. They perform a social act..
• Austin made a division in 3 categories of acts: Locutionary- Illocutionary and Perlocutionary acts.
• Characteristic of “performative”: it can succeed or fail based on the particular institutional and social conditions. And it has the ability to destabilize or even collapse binary oppositions. Polarities like subject/object and signifier/signified lose their polarity.
• In performance: self-referential acts that constitute reality and they can transform artist and spectator.
• From Austin to Butler: from speech acts to bodily acts.
• Butler will introduce “performative” in cultural philosophy.( 1988: Performative Acts And gender Constitution: An Essay in Phenomenology and Feminist Theory”. She argues that identity is formed based on bodily acts and instituted through a stylized repetition of acts: performative acts. Performative is:

1. “dramatic”- referring to the process of generating identities, one “does” a body and the materiality of the body emerges out of repetition of gestures and movements: Acts that will define and mark teh body sexually, culturally, ethnically, individually.
2. “non-referential”- they don’t refer to pre-existed conditions; no fixed. “Bodily, performative acts do not express a pre-existed identity but engender identity through these acts (p.27).

• Society imposes these performative acts that constitute gender and identity.
• The conditions for embodiment are set up.
• Both Austin and Butler see the accomplishment of performative acts as ritualized, public performances.
• Performativity results in performance or it manifests itself in the performative nature of acts.

The bodily co-presence between actors and psectators (p.38)

According to M. Herrmann’s demonstration that performance consists of the co-presence of actors and spectators > performance: requires two groups of people: one acting and one observing; to gather at the same time and place for a given shared lifetime.It’s the encounter of actor and observer that creates a performative event. In traditional terms: Actor> acts – Spectator>react/perceive/respond. In this sense performance is determined by self-referential and ever-changing feedback loop. (p.38). Middle of 19th century the visible and audible reactions of the spectators will be limited (dark auditorium, gas lighting etc.). The feedback loop gets controlled and organized. From 1960s and on performance explore more the interaction between actor and spectator – staging strategies- role reversal of actor4s and spectators/ creation of community between them/creation of various modes of mutual contact, proximity, interaction. Spectators will make physically experience of of the performance: audience participation.

ROLE REVERSAL: urges the dynamic and multiple shifts in the relationship subject-object. Schechner: let the people “join the story”. – spectator becomes participant/joins to staged rituals. Schechner gives emphasis to the relationship between equal co-subjects: (democratic model)and sets up an opposition between “play” and “social event”. The complication of such a decision to share responsibility with the audience is that spectator can subjugate the performer/inflict violence/act offensively. Later Schechner apply another model: the pressure and manipulation upon audience. In any case, the role reversal, as Schechner states, increase the insecurity for performance’s outcome. Aesthetic, political and social aspects are interlinked in performance (p.44).

CREATION OF COMMUNITY: aesthetics and socio-political coincide. Communities were formed when groups of people performed ritual collectively. (exaple: Nitsch’s orgy mystery theatre: collective performance of adapted rituals.). Strategies: role reversal and avoiding traditional theatre building/stage but choosing socially integrated locations. For experiencing community there is a shift of role: from spectator to participant to co-player. Fusion of aesthetics and social. The community is based on aesthetic principles but its member experience social reality.(p.55)

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The performance as event (p.161)

• The work of art is created as a “thing” whose “thingness” never vanishes. It exists as artifact, which remains consistent with itself regardless of the recipient’s presence….the artifact is accessible to different recipients at different times. And the recipient have the possibility to revisit, return to it and extract or discover new information each time, new possibilities and new meanings.
• Since 1960 when performance art emerges  there is a resistance to produce  artworks as marketable artifacts and commodities but replace them with fleeting events unable to buy and restore> ephemerality of the event. The performace’s aesthiticiy is manifested in its nature as event(p.162).

Three elements  constitute the nature of the performance as event, accordinf Fischer.:

1. Autopoiesis and emergence: mutual interaction between actors-spectators that drives the performance. In performance art , the performer  create situations which they expose the artist and  the spectator/situations that can make difficult the  development of the performance. the artist exposes her/himself and others  to an situation where they share responsibility. Not long god-like creators of the work. New image of the artist.
2. Collapse of dichotomies: All performances are self-referential and constitute reality.(p.170). Like art vs reality.
3. Liminality and transformation. rituals are linked to liminal and transitional experiences.

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SCHECHNER R., Performance Studies, 2006, p.28

According to Schechner:

Perform can be understood  in relation to: a) Being, b) Doing, c) Showing doing, d) Explaining “showing”.

Performance:

• marks identities, bend time, reshape and adorn the body, tell stories.
• are restored behaviors (physical, verbal or virtual actions that are prepared and rehearsed)
• are performed actions that people train for and rehearse.
• takes place as action, interaction and relation.
• isn’t “in” anything but “between”.
• to treat any object , work, or product “as” performance”{..} means to investigate what the object does, how it interacts with other objects or beings, and how it relates, to other objects or beings.
• Performance exists only as actions, interactions and relationships.

The seven function of performance:

• to entertain
• to make something that is beautiful
• to mark or change indentity
• to make or foster community
• to heal
• to teach, persuade, convince
• to deal with the sacred and/or demonic.

How easy is it today to take a picture? Well very easy.

Last year I have taken thousands of pictures. Pictures of  myself, of him, of her, of friends, of random people in the street, of performances, of houses, of monuments, of streets, of food, of garbage, of kids, of bicycle, of parks , of objects, of nature, of landscapes. Macro, long exposures, with “good” camera, with “bad” camera etc.

Sometimes I feel that while I am hunting a “perfect”, “beautiful” or “good” photo, in the meantime I am loosing what happens during the process. I am wondering how/if I can find a different “sense” to this daily gesture; if there is a way that “photographing” is not an easy activity, based on the purpose make a “good” photo or to document an event or to capture the “right” moment but a process that is more important that then final photo or the apparatus.

Therefore, I would like to make a photo just for you, to print it and send it as a postcard to you from Lincoln (UK) where I currently live – I always loved this traditional old fashion way to communicate through postcards and letters. – No facebook, instagram, twitter, email; Not a photo for consumption and approval but a photo for reflection. I would like this photo to be just something else rather than a “beautiful” photo; a photo that we make together; a photo that has “sense” for both of us; and it’s not so easy.

How?

I ask you to define for me a score by which I will take a photograph for you. I ask that the score be something to challenge me, either physically or mentally, but other than that you have free reign to decide what the parameters of this score should be. By ‘score’, what I mean is set of instructions or list of tasks I should carry-out in the process of creating a photograph for you : this does not have to be in any ‘normally’ recognised ‘form’ such as would be associated with music or dance : it can be a written list, or perhaps an individual graphic notation – anything you feel appropriate to challenge me to interpret. I will print this photo and I will send it to you by post.

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And I have already 3 tasks to carry out.

Today I spend an afternoon in studio with a beautiful dancer, Soyeon, and with Daz.

Usually the person who decided when something will be captured is the one that holds the camera. You watch through the lenses and you decide which is the “right” moment  to shoot. What happens when it’s your subject to decide when!

Soyen started a dance improvisation and we had agreed that I follow her in the space with my camera but she will be her to give the command “Now” when to shoot. I show so many “right” moments disappearing in front of my focus.

Waiting for the command:

I wanted many times just to press the button but I knew that I couldn’t unless I hear “now”. The first time we tried out after a while I could prevent more or less when she will say “now”. Maybe because I have been on the other side and as dancer I know what can look “interesting” or nice. However both we new that what I was looking and what she was thinking I am looking couldn’t possibly coincide.

“NoW”: photo made in a collaborative way. 

The second time we tried, actually, in a dance improvisation of approximately 15 minutes, she said “now” just twice- in the beginning. My tension was rising as I was waiting a command than never was given. Just once I couldn’t resist and I decided to shoot. I was breaking our contract but the need to take that photograph was more important. A nice photo?Well maybe yes, maybe no. But it was that moment that I felt closer to her. I felt that she was more emotional and vulnerable (my assumption) and then I wanted to evade her space and her privacy. So, I shot her.

Looking but without shooting. Waiting. Tension. Shots never taken.

Later Daz joined and we started a simple score-game.

Three roles:

A director set up a score for both.

A photographer tries to carry out the score.

A performer tries to carry out the score while avoiding to be photographed.

Example:

Trying to make a picture where ears and hands are in the same frame.

Trying to make a picture of Daz’s nose.