Magdaleena: Reconstructing and Redirecting the 'Dominant Gaze'

Abstract

Experimental filmmaking, expanded cinema, art films and gallery installations are all terms that are used to describe cinematic work that moves away from its conventional form and towards something unexpected and engaging. Magdaleena is an MFA research project that uses the form of expanded cinema to explore the act of looking and the act of being looked at. The cinematic gaze has been defined by theorists such as Laura Mulvey and Richard Dyer as ‘male gaze’ and ‘white gaze’. Following Dyer’s and Mulvey’s definitions, I will analyze the power relationships hidden in the act of looking, which I describe as the ‘dominant gaze’. My subjective experience is an important part of the research project, as the exploration of the ‘dominant gaze’ takes inspiration from my own non-binary gender experience. I will analyze how the normative power relationship, based on gender and other signifiers, affects the experience of being the object of the gaze. Through this work I will suggest how these power relationships can be shifted, and how the gaze can be reconstructed and redirected through the cinematic medium. In order to reconstruct the gaze, conventional spectatorship must be disturbed, therefore I will approach the narrative genre experimentally. I will follow filmmaker and artist Maya Deren’s direction on ‘vertical investigation’ in film, and combine analog and digital technologies to create a multi-channel film and installation. This critical engagement paper will describe the work process and methodologies used to create Magdaleena, a work which looks towards the future of expanded cinema and its capability of changing the way people look at moving images, and each other