中国古代建筑艺术中的凝视

中国古代建筑非常重视"象",但"象"大多依循程式,述而不作。因建筑之"象"既是视觉的社会建构之物,也是社会的视觉建构中介。"象"致力于成为生产"凝视"的欲望机器,而"象"的生成与传播又建基于由"礼"衍生的"数"、"位"、"文"。因此,它们分别担当了建筑凝视中的形塑机制、结构技术、话语背景角色。     

Making Space for the Maid

Chinese television dramas over the past decades have seen the rise and decline of various narratives, but no other narratives speak to the emerging urban middle class's fear and anxiety more palpably than the stories of the maid. However, despite the growing popularity of the maid stories among urban viewers, most of these stories do not resonate with domestic workers themselves. How do we make sense of the growing popularity of the maid stories among urban viewers? And how do we account for the differentiated capacity to resonate and identify with the characters among viewers? These are important questions to consider if one is to understand the new cultural politics of power and social formations in post-Mao China. In this paper, I explore some of the crucial ways in which a controlling gaze is facilitated and naturalised by the visualisation of place and space in these dramas. Then, through both critical analyses and engaged ethnography, I demonstrate how two sets of controlling gaze—everyday and televisual—reinforce and justify each other. Finally, I advance the concept of “peripheral vision,” which, I show, denies the modernist “master” narrative of the city and, instead, empowers the subaltern figure with an epistemological position of “eye-witness” and anthropologist of the city.     

The politics of the face: the scopic regime and the (un-)masking of the political subject

Face is commonly seen as a feature exclusive to each person. It expresses subject’s feelings, thoughts and in turn represents knowledge that is otherwise deemed personal. However, face is mistakenly seen as pure expression of subject’s thoughts. This article aims to show that face is a product of governing practices of seeing and knowing. It is thus not a unique individual expression, but a mask that the socio-political order attaches to individuals as they are turned into political subjects. The article begins with a discussion of the two governing practices: the seeing (or the spectre of the visible) and the knowing (or the practice of locating faces in the socio-political field) with an aim to unveil the role face plays in the socio-political reality. The first interrogation looks at how face creates a field of recognition and opens a distinct form of political visibility: who, what and how one sees and what remains unseen. Whereas the second interrogation discusses how appearances produce meaning and how knowledge is taken off the face. Finally, the face as a knowledge producer and a mean of subject’s social recognition (identity) is put in the encounter with the idea of the anxious gaze and the work of Marlene Dumas. Instead of recognition, here a subject is met with dissociation and displacement of subject’s socio-political image. The three presented studies paint the politics of the face as an obscene governing strategy caught between endless attempts to create the face as a known, seen and governed space and illusive attempts to grasp the actual meaning of a pre-symbolised face.     

Through a filtered lens: unauthorized picture-taking of people with dwarfism in public spaces

People with dwarfism often encounter discrimination in their daily interactions with strangers. Staring, harassment and infantilization are some of the behaviours they have reported to encounter. Through two qualitative research studies conducted in 2013 and 2015/16 it was revealed that people with dwarfism also experience strangers taking unauthorized pictures of them. This article explores this phenomenon in depth, utilizing the perspective of individuals who have experienced it first hand and analysing the relevant socio-historical influences. These include the history of the photographic exploitation of ‘abnormal’ bodies, and the cultural construction of a ‘dwarf’ as an object of entertainment. This article engages gaze theories in gender and race and ethnicity studies as well as a discussion of Foucault’s interpretation of the ‘panopticon’, positing that the advent of the cell-phone camera in the twenty-first century has altered how ‘abnormal’ bodies are recorded within oppressive ideological beliefs.     

注视:约翰·济慈的莎评范式

“注视”是让.斯塔罗宾斯基提出的文学批评术语,是他对文学批评的隐喻式描述。批评主体与作家的创造意识虽不能融为一体,“注视”却要求批评家全身心地投入作品中,对作品进行批评式阅读;长久的“注视”会把人的视线引入神秘的领域。在莎评中,济慈热情地“注视”文本并在“注视”中寻找创造的灵感和契机,并将“注视”的焦点对准“神秘”。     

视觉人称:绘画与影像艺术作品中的感知视角

视觉的人称变化对观看的结果起着决定性的作用,合适的视角既是合理观看的前提,也是艺术理念得以传播的先决条件。作品中事件行为主体的观看视角(第一人称视角)强调观者体验感知并沉浸其中,在心理上产生审美移情;事件旁观者视角(第三人称视角)与无行为主体假想视角强调叙述,更注重对事件本质的掌控。通过对视角的人称定位与变化的研究,将有利于更好的理解作品创作目的并协助创作,同时实现全方位、多维度视觉上的审美共识。     

The architect's gaze: The maintenance of collective professional vision in the work of the architect

Knowledge is something which is essentially embodied and present in the collective practices of seeing, in the professional vision of specific communities of knowledge workers. Architects represent a form of professional and knowledge-intensive work that includes both abstract categories such as style and design (‘form’) and material categories (‘matter’). Thus, professional vision is midway between, but also capable of integrating and co-aligning, abstract/intangible and concrete/material knowledge. Exploring how architects draw on vision and know-how in their day-to-day work, as well as in their engagement with a variety of media at a major Swedish firm of architects, the study suggests that the professional vision of the practicing architect is never fully integrated or coherent but must be subject to constant modifications and joint adjustments.     

“How Big is Big Enough?”

This article examines the representation of masculinity in Sex and the City through an analysis of the characters Big and Steve. Although the show is unique in that it presents female characters as the primary subjects of identification and presumes a female audience, it participates in the patriarchal project of measuring men, especially Big and Steve, against each other. At first, Big represents classic old-style phallic male character, the hero of both fairy tale and Hollywood romantic comedy. Steve, on the other hand, represents the new man, a flawed hero of modern relationship myths. However, throughout the course of the series, the illnesses of these two characters shift these representations. The series ultimately opens space for new representations of masculinity.     

An Interrupted Postcolonial/Feminist Cyberethnography: Complicity and Resistance in the "Cyberfield"

Informed by Foucault's theorisation of the docile body, the gaze, and the Panopticon, we analyse how the gaze is operationalised in the popular makeover show How to Look Good Naked (HTLGN). We explore how a regime of discipline is (re)produced through the drawing of boundaries constructing the feminine/masculine and straight/queer binaries. We analyse the delineation of rules and the performance of practices to maintain these boundaries, which support emphasised femininity and hegemonic masculinity. Whilst HTLGN claims to challenge the “body fascism” prevalent in the fashion, beauty, and advertising industries and rid women, and more recently men, of the shame associated with not meeting these ideals, we argue that the show's resistance is far from radical, functioning instead as a mediated ritual of rebellion, endorsing and sustaining key elements constituting prevailing constructions of femininity and masculinity.     

Drone-topia as method

ABSTRACT

The figure of the civilian camera drone remains ambiguous and contested. Its promises and perils shape contemporary imaginaries of future mobilities and visualities. Donny the Drone by Mackenzie Sheppard is one example of a fictional short film that creatively engages with such ambivalent scenarios in the story about a sentient quadcopter. In this article, I explore this techno-futurist narrative in how it serves as a heuristic for a mobile utopia. Themes of mobility and aerial commons, visuality and cosmopolitanism, relationality and affective subjectivity, along with domination and political mobilization emerge from the utopian thought experiment about a camera drone becoming human. Ultimately, I show how the evolving figure of the civilian drone serves as an experimental platform and utopian method towards elevated visions for an imaginative reconstitution of society.