masquerade

The idea of gender being a role that is performed, a masquerade, is an idea popular with many who seek to underline the view that females within our society are discriminated against and that they are coerced by society into performing a set of standardised female roles. Thus Riviere, is quoted by Blessing as having suggested that
“Womanliness could therefore be assumed and worn as a mask, both to hide the possession of masculinity and to avert the reprisals expected if she was found to possess it”. (Riviere, 1929).

The France and Germany, of the 1920’s when this was written, was quite different from the more developed nations of today’s modern World, There were a very few already assuming a degree of control over their own lives that only in very recent years has become usual in Western Europe, but for most females, this was a time well before even the legal enfranchisement of the gender.

Even if a major art movement of the times, Surrealism, did portray images that were at once female and disjointed or headless or involved within unusual juxtapositions, they were not looking towards further emancipation for females. According to Blessing, “despite the Surrealist’s proclaimed desire for revolution, emancipation, free love, they resoundingly rejected the threatening New Woman of Paris.” ( Blessing, 2006).

Women might thus rebel against the status quo using masquerade in one of three main ways. It was possible to act out an exaggerated role of a woman as the concept was approved of. Thus the passive, so as not to appear threatening, but sensual female role develops, who will support the household by becoming the ideal expected by society. Examples might include the gender roles given to female characters within early U.S. television sitcoms, or the exaggerated behaviours of female Hollywood stars or of more modern ‘popstars’ such as Madonna. A second course of rebellion was to take on the attributes of masculinity, females dressing and acting out male gender roles. Madonna also includes this as part of her stage act, but this is a technique, a masquarade, employed also by females working within previously male dominate workspaces. Thus city bankers wear dark suit jackets, even the female bankers. A third avenue of rebellion, that employed, for example, Sherman, is to dissect the given role, to exaggerate some part or characteristic of the whole, and so, by opening it up to ridicule, cast doubt upon the entire role being played by the gender.

It appears though, if these strategies are legitimate, and are indeed merely stratagems, then the actual characteristics of the female gender might lie anywhere. As Cahun is reported in Chadwick, (1998), “Under this mask, another mask, I will never be finished carrying all of these faces.” For the outsider, the problem becomes one of knowing which are the acts and which one is not; all the advantages lie with the actor who does not need to declare when the truth is finally arrived at.

Taking these three strategies of rebellion, it is possible to direct their force at another target, and it is around this that my project centres.

The French philosopher, Foucault, in his discourse about knowledge and power, explained that in modern societies, “Inspection functions ceaselessly. The gaze is alert everywhere”. (Foucault, 1975:195). I fear that this is becoming increasing true, and so my images take a view, (no pun intended,) or, perhaps more accurately, allow the observer to take a view, of the biometric data collection and the possible lines of resistance to such ideas, being implemented by the State, a subversion of ‘The Gaze’ as it was outlined by Foulcault. Gutting, further suggested that

“Not only is there control exercised via other’s knowledge of individuals; there is also control via individuals’ knowledge of themselves. Individuals internalise the norms laid down by the sciences of sexuality and monitor themselves to conform to these norms.” Gutting, ( 2001, 283).

The images shown take us upon a journey along that road of rebellion to the biometric classification of us all by the State, here either the official Government agencies or, more in tune with the Foucaldian ideas, the reproving gaze of our fellow citizens or even of our own moral codes.

‘Happily Married’ shows a happily married couple in bed with their two babies. It would be the standard nuclear family, except that the couple are children, acting out their roles as mother and father. No rebellion at all to the data collection being suggested.
The next pictures show the rebellion, the humanity disappears and in the place of human flesh, we see different examples of biometric data sources. In ‘Prints’, a fingerprint-head replaces the usual human recognised faces with machine readable fingerprints. In ‘Manwire’ we see an image where only the eyes are real in a bust of a person, the body already measured out for face-recognising machines, and the eyes, although real, are images of an iris and of a retina, both now regularly used, according to Ashdown, and to Jain et al, to allow biometric coding. Finally, in the last image, ‘Scalehead’, the individual has gone and is replaced by a machine that shows what would have been an individual’s weight. (The image should have been made to hang so that the top of the machine stood1.65 metres from the ground, but a specific print size was stipulated.) The retina and iris remain, a barcode serves as hair. The biometric image is clearly seen by the gaze. The humanity has entirely disappeared. In this way the work relates back to the methods used to subvert the roles assigned to women early in the last century. They looked to dissect their roles and to ridicule the situation that they felt that they had been put into. This series of images, depicting the masquerade of humans as mere data objects, rather than, for example, the family scene shown in the ‘Happily Married’ image, attempts to rebel against the masquerade and to ridicule the gaze.

There were some difficulties in obtaining the images. The weighing machine, once common, are now much less so, as due to our affluence, we have smaller electronic or bathroom scales, rather than the face I wanted to use. I did trace one, at the Lakeside Shopping Centre, and, after obtaining the image, I noticed that one had been recently installed in the Elephant and Castle Centre!

The idea for the Wireman can originally from the Toshiba advertisements, and was available from modern CAD programs, and needed only a little tweaking. The retina scan was mine.

The other personal data was taken from a range of different people, sufficient data exists in the images to create a person!

Ashbourn, J., (2002) Biometrics: Advanced Identity Verification
London. Springer-Verlag.

Chadwick, W. (1998) ‘Woman, Surrealism and Self-Representation’ Cambridge, Mass. MIT Press.

Gutting, G. (2001) French Philosophy in the twentieth century. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press

Foucault, M.,(1975)/(1991) Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison translated from the French by Sheridan, A., (1997), London,
Penguin

Jain, A., Bolle, R., and Pankanti S., (1999) ‘Introduction to Biometrics,’ in ‘Biometrics:Personal Identification in Networked Society’ Boston, USA. Klewer Academic Publishers.

Riviere, J. (1929) ‘Womanliness as Masquerade’ International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 9 essay [available online at www.mariabuszek.com/kcai/DadaSurrealism/DadaSurrReadings/RiviereMask.pdf [last accessed 10 May 2007]