dworkin

PART ONE 2007 (30:00)

When I first discovered Andrea Dworkin’s audio files, I knew I wanted to visualize how deeply her words spoke to me. But there was a problem. How would I do it? Anyone who has perused media imagery knows exactly - exactly - of what Dworkin speaks. But, how would I do it? I struggled for two days. I had long talks with my wife. It was much too easy, too upsetting, and too obvious to simply aggregate more vile imagery to parallel her words. But it was also too important to skirt or ignore these images. After all, isn’t this what Dworkin is suggesting? To STAND UP? To confront face-to-face? AND TO RESIST?

How would Dworkin make this video? Should I, visually, replicate the same ‘shock’ value so necessary in Dworkin’s spoken text? (She did, in fact, use pornographic slides in many of her presentations.) But at what point does revisualization compliment?… and when does it simply add to the exploitation? Would I just bring another man’s viewpoint to this text; another man-with-a-movie-camera viewpoint? But, you know, in one important sense, that can’t be helped; I am a man... with visualization tools. It should not stop me from trying.

In the end (although there is never an ‘end’ in these matters), I chose this approach. I used images – headshots – of women from porn sites. Just headshots. Then, I scrolled them left-to-right. I slowed them down, slightly blurred them, ‘film-aged’ them, pushed them back into low resolution to let theses images tell their own stories. Do they compliment or distract?

There is another slight, important visual nuance as well. The left-to-right scrolling is not consistent. This is purposeful. I wanted variable speeds to counter viewer complacency to these seemingly endless visuals. Some images stop, some hesitate. Hopefully, it is a subtle reminder that these are all women, humans, made pornographic now, but humans nonetheless.