UK Lens-Based Media in the 1980s and 1990s: Disability, Sexuality and the Politics of Representation

本论文针对20世纪80年代至90年代英国的摄影，视频和电影，考虑交叉，但往往被忽视的残疾，性和政治代表的历史。我将研究女性和酷儿艺术家的实验性镜头作品，他们使用引用，非规范性叙事和幻想来表达与文化上被刻为酷儿和残疾人的身体的感觉平行。该项目将把健康问题带到关于女同性恋女权主义镜头媒体讨论的最前沿，将解决摄影理论中对纪录片形式的挑战，并定位这些辩论在残疾人权利行动主义和响应第28条中转变为新目的的地方。该项目将开始，在20世纪70年代的新摄影理论，在20世纪80年代和90年代作为一个背景下，女同性恋女权主义艺术家的图像制作和写作实践的辩论。理论家和摄影师维克托伯金在《思考摄影》（1982）中提出，纪实摄影是意识形态的，因此在表现“真实”方面受到限制，这一观点被女同性恋女权主义者的镜头作品所采纳，以证明表现和性的不可分割性。我建立在最近的奖学金上，借鉴了Burgin，Simon Watney和Jo Spence关于代表政治的基础著作，并阐明了摄影，理论和女同性恋身份的融合（Guy 2017;邓斯特2017），以及反对工人阶级社区和妇女的主流形象的社区摄影计划（Stacey 2020; Klorman-Eraqi 2017）。该项目将从这些角度出发，重点突出残疾人的代表性，将其作为身份建构的关键。残疾和女同性恋身份之间的交叉方法目前缺乏对历史镜头为基础的媒体的关键辩论。基于对英国当代代表性辩论的现有理解，我的研究将特别关注伦敦的Cinenova收集的同性恋，女权主义艺术家的电影和视频，那里还没有任何关于残疾作品的认真研究。我还将利用格拉斯哥妇女图书馆的关键收藏，特别是女同性恋档案馆;伦敦的主教门研究所，它拥有反叛女同性恋者的档案; Jo Spence纪念图书馆档案馆; Tessa Boffin档案馆和圣安德鲁斯大学的Franki Raffles档案馆。为了进一步将视觉材料置于情境中，这项研究将使用与艺术家，策展人和活动家的访谈。“Crip”和酷儿理论将构成研究的方法框架，从而能够讨论摄影和电影中交叉的多种身份形式（McRuer 2006，2017; Garland-Thompson 2001; Butler 1990，1993; Sedgwick 1990）。当代艺术家和学者也借鉴了酷儿理论，并将残疾作为一个关键的透镜来看待对文化同质化的其他形式的抵抗（Smith 2021; Hedva 2016;麦克阿瑟和Zavitsanos 2013; Russel 2001）。这一框架将使我能够提出新的问题，代表，因为它涉及到残疾，并将研究的例子作为历史先例，以克里普理论的索赔今天。该项目将对巡回展览《偷来的一瞥：女同性恋者拍照》（1991年）和以性和残疾为主要主题的电影进行新的分析。Parmar、Jacqui Duckworth、Tran T Kim-Trang和Noski Deville的作品通过纪录片和非纪录片的形式，摆脱了残疾人的“积极形象”。这些电影使用虚构、非规范性叙事和引用作为颠覆性策略，以视觉方式呈现自我的内部世界;既奇怪又残疾。这些电影以非纪录片的模式和非规范的叙事，同时询问健全的固定性，女同性恋身份和镜头为基础的代表。

This thesis addresses photography, video, and film of 1980s-1990s Britain, to consider the intersecting but often overlooked histories of disability, sexuality, and the politics of representation. I will examine experimental lens-based works by women and queer artists who use citation, non-normative narrative, and fantasy to articulate a felt parallel with bodies culturally inscribed as queer and disabled. Bringing health to the forefront of discussions on lesbian feminist lens-based media, the project will address the challenge to documentary form in photography theory and locate where these debates were transformed to new ends in disability rights activism and in response to Section 28. The project will begin by setting out debates in the new photography theory of the 1970s, that in the 1980s and 90s served as a backdrop to the image-making and writing practices of lesbian feminist artists. Theorist and photographer Victor Burgin's contention in Thinking Photography (1982) that documentary photography is ideological, and therefore limited in representing 'the real', was taken up in lesbian feminist lens-based work to posit the inseparability of representation and sexuality. I build on recent scholarship that draws on the foundational writings of Burgin, Simon Watney and Jo Spence on the politics of representation, and illuminates the convergence of photography, theory and lesbian identity (Guy 2017; Dunster 2017), and community photography initiatives that countered mainstream images of working-class communities and women (Stacey 2020; Klorman-Eraqi 2017). Departing from these accounts, this project will vitally centre the representation of disability as pivotal to constructions of identity. An intersectional approach between disability and lesbian identity is currently lacking from critical debates on historical lens-based media. Building on existing understandings of contemporaneous debates on representation in Britain, my research will focus in particular on the Cinenova collection of queer, feminist artists' film and video in London, where there is yet to be any serious study on works related to disability. I will also draw on key collections at the Glasgow Women's Library, particularly the Lesbian Archive; the Bishopsgate Institute in London, which holds the archive of Rebel Dykes; the Jo Spence Memorial Library Archive; the Tessa Boffin archive and the Franki Raffles Archive at the University of St Andrews. To further contextualise visual materials, the study will use interviews held with artists, curators, and activists. 'Crip' and queer theory will form the study's methodological framework, enabling a discussion of multiple forms of identity as they intersect in photography and film (McRuer 2006, 2017; Garland-Thompson 2001; Butler 1990, 1993; Sedgwick 1990). Contemporary artists and academics have also drawn on queer theory and centred disability as a critical lens to view alternative forms of resistance to cultural homogenisation (Smith 2021; Hedva 2016; MacArthur and Zavitsanos 2013; Russel 2001). This framework will enable me to ask new questions on representation as it pertains to disability, and to posit the study's examples as historical precedents to Crip theory's claims today. This project will offer new analyses on the touring exhibition Stolen Glances: Lesbians Take Photographs (1991), and films that take both sexuality and disability as their primary subject. Works by Parmar, Jacqui Duckworth, Tran T Kim-Trang and Noski Deville negotiate documentary and non-documentary forms to move away from 'positive images' of people living with disability. These films use fiction, non-normative narrative, and citation as subversive strategies to visually render interior worlds of the self; both queer and disabled. Reckoning with non-documentary modes and non-normative narrative, these films simultaneously interrogate the fixity of able-bodiedness, lesbian identity and lens-based representation.