Abjection, the performative and creativity in the works of Suzan Pitt, Tabaimo and Miwa Matreyek

Buchan, Suzanne (2015) Abjection, the performative and creativity in the works of Suzan Pitt, Tabaimo and Miwa Matreyek. In: 27th Annual International Society for Animation Studies Conference: Beyond the Frame, 13-16 Jul 2015, Canterbury, Kent, United Kingdom. . [Conference or Workshop Item]

Abstract

With a focus on animation installation and performance, I first introduce a (post)feminist framework (McRobbie, Tasker & Negra) to locate a set of spatial politics. This is followed by a comparative analysis of the works of three women animation artists. I revisit a now often maligned theoretical framework, psychoanalytic theory – that was extremely generative for feminist film studies – to explore issues of creativity, desire and gender, of cultural specificity, critique and difference, and of alienation. Focussing specifically on libido and abjection, and Japanese gendered cultural behaviours, I undertake a comparative analysis of Suzan Pitt's seminal feminist work Asparagus (1979) and the young Japanese artist Tabaimo's recent animation installations. Then, after introducing Miwa Matreyek's recent Dreaming of Lucid Living (2007-) performance, in which the female figure is central, but it is not a simulacrum or drawn representation, I use this analytic apparatus to establish resonances and distinctions between these three artists, proposing that the trope of inside/outside specific to their animated and gendered worlds is a postfeminist strategy. I will also examine formal and aesthetic convergences and distinctions in their works, a set of dichotomies and tensions, that relate to observations about feminist concerns, concluding with brief reflections on the viewer's response to the works.

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