Penny Eleanor

American Studies major, Africana Studies minor

I use imaginative video installations and performances, like modern dance, to mine the history of digital imaging in relation to weaponry. I map the body, space, and the body in space to examine the physical effects of visuality in a creeping authoritarian American political culture. Modern dance is a form of movement that responds to the rigidity of other dance movements through breath and flow. Inspired by choreographers Pina Bausch and William Forsythe, I create and film performances to mediate their images through digital manipulation in order to question the shape of hegemonic power and its use of technology, information and surveillance. I build elaborate narratives to visualize the relationship between labor, consumer products and mathematical tools that reshape women’s* bodies under capitalism.

*My use of the term “women” refers to the marketplace definition and the construction of an ideal within a capitalist context. I believe that the conditions I examine affect people whose gender identity is woman, non-binary or anyone who is not cisgender men.

bubbly lime green line holding shape with text 'CLEAN BOTANICS'

Clean Botanics (2020) demonstrates how technology and its relationship to women’s bodies play out in the marketplace. The ideal woman should be sincerely interested in whatever the market demands of her. Inspired by Jia Tolentino’s essay “Always Be Optimizing” (2019) and video artist Mika Rottenberg’s Mary’s Cherries (2004), this skincare regimen depicts how the labor required to optimize beauty products are carried out by others’ bodies and our own, which themselves are turned into monetized objects. The formula is made of botanical extracts, animal extracts, human extracts––the natural––and artificial intelligence. The body plays a double role as tool and raw matter. Machines are learning to map the body to design consumer products and applications which change the perception and distribution of the ideal woman’s body. Is the facemask manufactured or is our consent to them?

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