Between frames: feminist experimental media 1960-2010
Bibliographic record
Abstract
My dissertation maps a trajectory of feminist experimental media made between the 1960s and 2010 that explore the boundaries between bodies, spaces and media. I argue that this work constitutes an under-explored area within feminist film and media criticism, which requires renewed critical engagement from an interdisciplinary perspective. I develop a critical frame based on definitions of embodiment, liminality and intermediality from the discipline of performance studies. I focus on how these diverse art works engage with different formal thresholds including those between the art object, artist, and viewer within the exhibition site, and those between moving image, visual art, sculpture and performance. I argue these works pose a challenge to existing definitions of cinematic specificity and expand the significance of the medium. \n\nI provide three comparative analyses of feminist experimental film and media made between the 1960s and the early 2000s. In the first comparison, I read together Carolee Schneemann's film Plumb Line (1967-72) and Yvonne Rainer's film Lives of Performers (1972). I argue Schneemann and Rainer share a formal aesthetic approach that positions both artists as author and image, employs the body as an art medium and critiques the dynamics of the male gaze within everyday life. In chapter four I consider how Canadian feminist experimental film during the late 1970s and 1980s employed different modes of inter-subjective address. I outline how Patricia Gruben, Brenda Longfellow, Kay Armatage and Midi Onodera construct liminal viewing spaces that blur the distinction between diegetic and non-diegetic space in order to fully engage the viewer. In chapter five I examine the contemporary screen-based art of Shirin Neshat and Eija-Liisa Ahtila. I argue Neshat and Ahtila's use of intermediality includes a feminist critique of cinematic traditions and women's limitations within public and private life. \n\nMy dissertation concludes that this trajectory of feminist film and experimental media importantly troubles the boundaries of time and space, presence and absence, and subject and object, and expands the possibilities of the different media involved. I situate this research within the intersecting fields of performance studies and media studies. I aim to bridge the discourses of film and performance together, arguing that each discipline benefits greatly from the insights of the other.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.005 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.015 | 0.016 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.009 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.017 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".