Dynamic experiments: deconstructing the body in feminist experimental film and performance

Abstract

This study is situated at the intersection of two fields: the exploratory practices of female experimental artists and the speculative extension of the female body in imagery and philosophical texts. Employing textual analysis alongside examples from visual texts, this research reconstructed and critiqued structuralist and postmodernist interpretations to explore deconstructive misreadings and reflections of the female body within temporal and spatial dimensions in experimental film works. In doing so, the study offers innovative and diverse perspectives on the theoretical expression possibilities available to avant-garde female artists, as Illustration as on the multidimensional elements within philosophical practice texts. This includes the entanglement and contradictions betien bodily imagery and postmodernist texts, alongside a decentralised reconstruction of the social and natural realities of the body. The project's theoretical framework was grounded fundamentally in the works of Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze, with significant reference to Rosi Braidotti, Judith Butler, Donna J. Haraway, and Giorgio Agamben. The analysis explored the malleability of bodily autonomy practices across time and space, proposing a future state of self-awareness for the body that transcends gender-centricity, and underscoring the significance of constructing social networks of embodied existence.