Re-mapping the curve of the young female figure; feminist media art practice, in the age of digital transformation by Sophie Hedderwick

This practice research project (re) imagines the young female body and the transformation of adolescence; using the curve as an expanded motif, conceived in relational, figurative, temporal and geometric terms. I reflect on how the adolescent body is (re) presented differently by digital technologies, through the prism of feminist post-human philosophy. I explore how new media can (re) imagine the pubescent body in its polymorphous becoming using multimedia time displacement techniques and immersive technologies. Through multimedia technologies - photography, film, animation and 3D - I explore the female figure from an eco feminist perspective. I aim to emancipate the young female figure from a patriarchal representation and linear trajectory to one that looks both backwards and forwards to a possible future, a feminist space (Kristeva. 1981); using a feminist praxis to examine the possibilities of a non-linear arc of transformation. Through a series of iterative experimental digital artworks I (re)imagine the young female figure in terms of relational movement (Manning. 2009) and the post-human notion of becoming woman (Braidotti. 2016). I explore how the adolescent girl/woman moves in relation to the environment and others, using immersive digital technologies that privilege a sensory encounter.

This video essay uses film footage from the twins in the studio, as they attempt exercises on pointe, juxtaposed with super 8 digitised footage of my adolescent daughter’s legs as she plays in the Diana Memorial. The film explores the notion of walking and falling, both on pointe and in water, and play versus the discipline of ballet exercises. It highlights the twin’s adolescent uncertainty, and lack of gravity in comparison to the relative freedom of my young daughter as she plays in the water.

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Hem, edge, extremeties

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