Shannon O’Donnell is an emerging photographer, focusing on ideas like gender, men and women roles in society, manhood and all sorts of other identity related concepts. She has recently graduated documentary photography at the university of South Wales, and completed media photography and history as subjects for her A-Levels.
Her inspirations include Claude Cahun and she calls her ‘rebellious’ for being one of the pioneers of identity photography. Another inspiration Shannon mentioned to us was the Casa Susanna project where all types of people would gather in the 1960’s, and celebrate what we would call now, LGBTQ. Walter Pfeiffer and Adi Nes (a jewish Israeli who works mainly on work related to masculinity, being a male, manhood stages, masculine roles and war), were also some people whose work interests her.
Adi Nes
Walter Pfeiffer
Claude Cahun
Casa Susanna
”By Your Bedside (2018) is a series of images that I created to compliment my short film, Susan’s Sleep. The images are quite, to reflect my own experience during the time my mother was in a coma. I went mute during this time, isolated myself and kept my emotions inside. The only time that I felt able to express myself was when I was sat by my mother’s bedside. These images convey the surreal movie-like experience I felt while waiting for my mum to wake up.” – Shannon O’Donnell
BY YOUR BEDSIDE (2018)
Susan’s Sleep is a very personal piece by Shannon made in the last year or two. O’Donnell describes the film she made as a type of personal therapy to help her process a tough part of her life, when her mother was put into a coma. It consists of a series of photos and clips made into a short film. This video she has made includes lots of sounds from the hospital, places behind clips taken by a phone, GoPro and camera, as well as footage from her family archives.The film depicts a scary and very personal experience of not knowing what will happen, and also the experience of living in intensive care. Through this harsh time she recorded audio and film, and now her mother is doing much better after 6 months rehabilitation to help her walk regain good mental health. I personally think it represents a lot of what society is facing today with the ongoing pandemic and how we have to stay strong.
THEME: Rebelling against the societal expectations towards women.
SUBJECT: Focusing mainly on personal identity as well as incorporating politics in the sense of how the capitalistic government controls what we are influenced by.
INTENTIONS: In groups, we carried out a dice roll task. We were given three die and asked to roll them all at once. Each dice was linked to a set of words which corresponded with the number on the die. After the dice were rolled, we were left with the following three words: RISK, CHANCE and ABSURD. These were to be incorporated into our manifesto.
VISUALS: Inspiration from O’Donnell on her process of ‘performing’ for the camera. Additionally, our group was inspired by how O’Donnell portrayed the conflict between her and her personal identity.
SOUND: A reading of the poem ‘The Jabberwocky’ by Lewis Carroll. Although not from the Dada era, it can be considered as a nonsense poem. The subject within the poem is shown to have rebelled against the advice and warnings about the creature from his father and is later praised for this rebellion. We felt as though it would successfully tie in with our theme as the subject of our film is planning to rebel against the norms of society. We were hoping that the Jabberwocky would be a metaphor for society and the lack of control people have over their identity due to this.
TITLE ideas: Opening the third eye, The art of unlearning, Reconditioning the mind,
‘An open third eye allows you to take in light and details that you would otherwise miss, and this can be intense or overwhelming at first. Feeling like you are changing on a fundamental level, even if you struggle to put it into words.’
What is a manifesto?
In art: a manifesto is a public declaration of the intentions, motives, or views of an artist or artistic movement.
Additionally, we were looking to incorporate the idea of ‘Breaking the rules of reality’. This is present in our manifesto below.
Narrative (Risk)
Events throughout the film depict the risks being taken and the final outcome of the film amplifies this risk / resolves it.
Mise-en-scene (Absurdity)
Costumes and props will emphasize the absurdity surrounding gender roles and stereotypes.
Editing (Chance)
We want to give the audience a chance to reconsider their beliefs surrounding gender and identity. Especially we want to look at the idea of unlearning negative gender roles and identity expectations through editing such as reversed scenes.
Dadaism was an avant-garde movement established in response to the horrors of World War One. It was an anti-art movemtn which aimed to mark the disillusionment and absurdity of hte times they were living in. The dadaism movement came in multiple forms, ranging from art and music to fashion and poetry.
The artwork that came from this movement is often described as having strong political tones, as well as being ‘absurd’ ‘unconventional’ and ’empty art’.
A few founding principles of dadaism are:
Humour
Spontaneity
Paradoxical (having contradictory features)
Irrationalism
Artistic freedom
Dadaism aimed to show the faults in society’s idea of progress. The Dada movement rejected capitalism and authoritarianism. Marcel Duchamp was the most prominent artist from this movement who exemplified these attitudes in his work.
Marcel Duchamp
Duchamp was one of the pioneers of the Dada movement. He changed the view that art had to be based on an artefact or something physical. Dadaism changed ‘art’ to become a concept by destroying the very foundations it was established on.
In a bold attempt to destroy the definition of art, he sought out to submit an outrageous art entry to an exhibition by the Society of Independent Artists in New York, 1917. This particular exhibition had rules that explicitly stated that all works submitted would be exhibited. With having 2500 submitted pieces, the exhibition was a massive event, and attracted the attention Duchamp wanted.
Whilst looking for his perfect exhibit, Duchamp came across a retail store which had a display of sanitary ware. He then purchased a standard ,white porcelain urinal and took it to his studio where he signed it with the pseudonym ‘R.Mutt’ and named the piece ‘Fountain’. Ironically, it is now the most memorable piece from the exhibit as its nonsensical nature outraged the exhibitors, who removed it from display after a short while.
L.H.O.O.Q. was another one of Duchamp’s most influential pieces. Labelled as a ‘cheap reproduction’ of the world renowned ‘Mona Lisa’, Duchamp defaced the subject with a comical moustache and goatee. Some interpret this as the conversion of a woman to man, linking it to the idea that Leonardo da Vinci’s sexuality was directed more favourably to men. Others argue that it was Duchamp’s rebellion against the traditional nature of art.
Additionally, the name itself, ‘L.H.O.O.Q.’ has been interpreted as a pun. It is argued that the letters sound similar to the french phrase “Elle a chaud au cul” which has multiple explicit translations. The letters have become words which translate to a devaluing male comment on the dignified woman depicted in the original photo.
Tristan Tzara
Tzara was a Romanian-born French poet known mainly as one of the founders of Dada. He produced numerous art pieces but his main contribution to the Dada movement was to publish manifestos that outlined the goals of Dada and spreading this to as wide of an audience as he could get. He arranged many vulgar and shocking performances at one of his local cafes using much deconstructed, nonsense language with the intention to shock his audience and a destroy all preconceived expectations they may have had about his performance.
Spontaneity exercise
Dada poetry rejected reason and logic and instead incorporated nonsense, irrationality, and intuition into its work.
Tzara’s 1920 manifesto proposed to cut words from a newspaper and randomly select these words to create poetry, a process which is often used for this type of poetry today.
The Dada movement also created the well-known ‘sound-poetry’. Shown above is Hugo Ball’s ‘Karawane’.
In response to the spontaneous nature of Dadaism, we were given a task to create one of these Dadaist-style poems.
I was given 5 minutes and a sheet of a newspaper.
I cut out random letter and words
Placed these words in a box.
I randomly took out a word one at a time and placed it on the page, to create a ‘nonsense’ poem.
At the start of the 20th century there was a boom in support for women’s suffrage, signified under the banner ‘Votes for Women’. The women-only movement, ‘Women’s Social and Political Union’ (WSPU) was founded by Emmline Pankhurst in 1903 which pushed for equality for women more harshly as previous ‘peaceful’ tactics had not been successful, this approach was know as militant and In 1906, a reporter writing for the Daily Mail coined the term suffragette for the WSPU, from Suffragist, to belittle the women advocating women’s suffrage.
Unlike New Zealand who had granted the vote for all women over 21 years of age in 1893, enfranchisement for women in Britain still hadn’t occurred by 1903, leading to more militant actions being taken by the suffragettes.
Deeds, not words
WSPU motto
Emily Wilding Davison – (11 October 1872 – 8 June 1913)
Emily was a militant suffragette, she was arrested 9 times and went on hunger strike 7 times, being force-fed on 49 occasions. She unfortunately died at the 1913 Derby, when she walked onto the track during a race. On June 14th 1913, Emily’s body was transported from Epsom to London, inscribed on her coffin was ‘Fight on. God will give the victory’. Five thousand women formed a procession followed by many male supporters.
The Cat and Mouse Act 1913 – Some members of the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU, commonly referred to as suffragettes) had been imprisoned for acts of vandalism in support of women’s suffrage. In protest at being imprisoned, some of the suffragettes undertook hunger-strikes. The hunger strikers were force-fed by the prison staff, leading to a public outcry. The act was a response to the protestations. It allowed the prisoners to be released on licence as soon as the hunger strike affected their health; they then had a predetermined period of time in which to recover after which they were rearrested and taken back to prison to serve out the rest of their sentence. Conditions could be placed on the prisoner during the time of their release. One effect of the act was to make hunger strikes technically legal. The nickname of the act came about because of the domestic cat’s habit of playing with its prey, allowing it to temporarily escape a number of times, before killing it.
1918 – Women’s grant to vote if over 30 years old
1928 – Women of the age 21 and over could have the vote
Women’s vote locally – Was debated over several days, it was passed on 22nd May 1919 and entered into force on 12th July 1919.
Femen–
Femen is a feminist activist group in Ukraine intended to fight for and protect women’s rights. The organization became internationally known for organizing controversial topless protests against sex tourism, religious institutions, sexism, homophobia,and other social, national, and international topics. Founded in Ukraine, the group is now based in France.
Ultimately these protests were born out of the normalised misogyny that underpins Ukrainian society. Though this protest may contrast to many previous, feminist protests look different everywhere. Ideas behind protests such as this take the main focus or cause (in this case the female body) and use it as a device to torment the tormentor. In addition, as this form of protest is more radical it is likely to attract more attention from both everyday people and the media.
#Metoo –
In 2006, Burke founded the Me Too movement and began using the phrase “Me Too” to raise awareness of the pervasiveness of sexual abuse and assault in society. The phrase “Me Too” developed into a broader movement following the 2017 use of #MeToo as a hashtag following the Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations.
Similar to other social justice and empowerment movements based upon breaking silence, the purpose of “Me Too”, as initially voiced by Burke as well as those who later adopted the tactic, is to empower women through empathy and solidarity through strength in numbers, especially young and vulnerable women, by visibly demonstrating how many women have survived sexual assault and harassment, especially in the workplace.
BLM –
In July 2013, the movement began with the use of the hashtag #BlackLivesMatter on social media after the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of African-American teen Trayvon Martin 17 months earlier in February 2012.
Recently, the George Floyd protests are ongoing series of protests and civil unrest, mostly throughout America that are fighting for the equality of black lives. Polls in summer 2020 estimated that between 15 million and 26 million people had participated at some point in the demonstrations in the United States, making the protests the largest in U.S. history. Protests have continued as of October 2020.
The protests in America sparked other protests internationally, with the hashtag #BLM being used to raise awareness on multiple social-media posts. This cultural reckoning on racial injustice has also raised multiple questions about the federal governing in America. The systematic racism has been evident throughout American government for many years. For example the 13 Amendment was created in order to prevent slavery however, it only acts as a disguise for institutions to take advantage of certain people and cultures for profit (e.g the mass arrest of innocent black people in order to gain profit through prisons/ sentences).
Compare Suffragette movement to Femen Movement
Initially, both of these movements appear very different which is mostly due to contextual factors such as time, socio-economics, dominant ideologies and identity. The suffragette movement began in 1903, a time where enfranchisement or many other rights for women was viewed as irrelevant. On the other hand, founded by Ukrainian activist the Femen movement began in 2008. The key similarity between these two movements would be the continuation of a hegemonic struggle, suggested by Antonio Gramsci, whereby women are still seen as inferior in comparison to men. However, a more subtly similarity would be how the fight for equality for women is still being fought, over 100 years after the suffragette movement. Although the suffragette movement was massive and ultimately life changing for the role women played in society, it is evident that true equality is still yet to be reached. Furthermore, I believe that the suffragette movement was the catalyst which led to multiple other movements, for women as well as other identity political demographics such as the BLM movement.
Snapshot through chronological order of the day with the female playing traditional female roles and male playing male roles
Visual – Use split screen, with female playing female role on left side – keeping the left side pink clothing themed, and then after male playing male role on right – keeping the right side blue clothing themed
Half way through film (45 seconds) do role reversal and have male playing female role still on left side, and then have the woman playing the male role on the right side – with both the outfit colours then also matching with the reversed roles
Audio – Using basic and somewhat plain background noises of what that specific scene would sound like – eg sound of tap running in a washing scene, and then when the scene cuts to short black screen the audio of the next scene then quickly blends into the upcoming scene
Title – ‘The elephant in the room’ relating to phrase of obvious point being ignored – the elephant being the role gender stereotpes still has in the modern day, the room as society.
Repetition – Use of snapshots following same format throughout with only slight difference of male/female actor
Everyday – following through a daily routine
Play – playing on stereotypes
Title –
Layout plan for the film, what the screen will present and in what structure
