Due to Ryan’s absence, we could not do the shoot for this project until after part 1 was due. So, for part 1 we presented on our motivates and gave a little context to the work, which helped us get the concept down after presenting it once. We all really liked the simplicity of the work in its physical sense while still having such a wealth of conceptual complexities in it. I researched the historical lens for studio and with that learned a lot about Relational Aesthetics, which is another beauty of her series. The complexity and its level, seen in the photographs were up to you, she put forward a question, not an answer. During our presentation, it became very apparent to me that we don’t have any answers, but we can start the discussion of the female gaze.
Our project will entail Ryan striping in front of a woman around the same age, so classmates, etc. Like Stehli, we will give them the power to take 3-12 photos at any point during his stripping. This will take place in the bathroom of our Thursday studio room, 302 I think. Since Ryan was in Singapore getting his visa and we had so much in-class work time for this project we ended up in the bathroom with the computer facetiming most of the time because it was too loud to hear him in the classroom. On a conceptual level this choice was made to evoke the seedy, and sometimes scary, actions you relate to a bathroom and the tile. For me, it brings up pictures of people passed out from ODing laying on the floor of the bathroom, sexual assault, and the place gay men would go for hookups prior to homosexuality being legal. There is a lot that the tile of a bathroom brings up and one phrase Lynn brought up was “Behind closed doors” as where female sexuality has traditionally lived, behind a door of taboos in a seedy corner. That phrase became the name of the project. So, in our version of “The Stripe Series,” we decided to bring up the taboo that is the female gaze. Do woman even have it? Is it okay for them too? What is the female gaze? Our aim is to bring up that it exists and is okay because sexuality is a normal thing, however, we are not saying that it is okay for either sex to over-sexualize or objectify each other. That being said it is a piece of relational aesthetics and we do not have control over your view of the series, we can only say that was not our aim and put it out there.
