Man, I feel Women: Experiments into understanding female gender roles and methods of empowerment in a patriarchal and culturally conservative nation.

For my Conditional pass I was asked to add the following to my thesis in order for it to be passed:
1st – Read Claire Bishop’s Artificial Hells and use it in order to contextualize my experiments and place them within the overall context of performance works.

2nd – Add a section that acknowledges my personal position (a Saudi woman who has lived abroad), and identify who my audience is.

– My position is that of an entangled outsider looking in to better understand my own culture that I have left behind and am now moving back to.

– My audience is: the “west” as my position has always felt removed and therefore I feel its educating myself from an almost foreign yet entangled perspective as I have never lived under any sort of restriction. To share experiences of my culture that I myself find different, in a way reminding myself while educating the foreign audience. But also to share it with people from my culture that find these attributes and behaviors familiar but also don’t necessarily agree with them.

3rd – Reflect and analyze the experiments after they have been done in real time which is no longer possible under the circumstances. Instead, I would like to:

Compare them to Artist’s works that have already occurred with the same subject.

The new way I would structure it is to use my planned experiments as a reaction and comparison to other artists work that address the core of each of the experiments as well as referencing Claire Bishop’s Artificial Hells. I would describe and analyze theses artists work that have that same intention but have maybe produced something else as a result.

Experiment 1 “one way mirror cubicle” adresses the idea of isolation in a public space, please find another performance or artists work that adresses this. then use my experiment as a reaction of what I would do.

Experiment 2 ” Talk to her” adresses the censorship of voice or the weight of womans voice

Experiment 3 “Greetings” adresses how greeting someone can signify how conservative one is.

Experiment 4 “Cross dress” adresses how switiching gender roles is a tool for empowerment.

Experiment 5 “Censor his vision” adresses the idea of visual censorship.

Please find existing examples and use my experiments as a reaction.

The thesis addresses the way in which art can be used to expose certain attributes of these systems of difference. I mainly focus on the subverting the systems of difference between male and female. I intend to add another section that exposes the systems of difference between inside and outside that still empower the woman.

All the experiments address what its like to be a Saudi woman when compared against a male. What I would like to add is the way in which the women treat themselves. What are their differences between what’s seen or concealed? What I mean by this is addressing the contrast of inside vs outside. How are they like in the home vs how they are like in public? Rather than looking at the way the public treats them, it is rather how they see themselves behind closed doors. What are the little things that these women do to empower themselves that aren’t seen? Is there a hidden fantasy world that we cannot see?

The intention of my thesis was:

– To expose the double standard between male and female but also outside vs inside. By using sarah nuttalls strange encounters that help clarify gender roles and the idea of the “stranger”
– The power play between male and woman outside vs inside (this is something I would like to add)
– To show how art can be used as a tool to address these social constructs and subvert them.
– To use art as a tool to empower the woman.

Sources used
Strange Encounters by Sarah Ahmed

“Entanglement: Literary and Cultural Reflections on Post-apartheid “. Entanglement: Literary and Cultural Reflections on Post-apartheid, by Sarah Nuttall, Wits University Press, 2009

PLEASE ADD CLAIRE BISHOPS ARTIFICIAL HELLS

Please use the document that I have attached as the base of the paper and add all instructions above.