Feminist Art and Practice-based Research

This presentation is an autotheoretical text concerning a central methodology in my current book project, Erotic Resistance: The Struggle for the Soul of San Francisco (UC Press, 2024). The book is an homage to the city and those who have grieved the loss of its unique character. Artists, writers, and activists alike have mourned and contributed to conversations about this loss, which I examine through the lens of eroticism. I have intentionally chosen to document erotic, and therefore deeply embodied performance cultures, because they have influenced the ethos of the city since the era of the Barbary Coast. I cull from the perspectives of dancers, artists, and activists who performed in strip clubs, burlesque theaters, and in the performance and visual art scenes. My primary focus is on women artists who were active in these milieux from the 1960s through the 1990s. In order to have a better sense of their perspectives and to prepare for my fieldwork, I employed practice-based research, in which I developed an exotic dancer persona. The first step in developing this persona was to visualize her by way of my self-portrait entitled Alchemy: Performing Myselves and the Everyday Practices of Subjectification/Objectification (2016), which is the primary subject of this presentation. I discuss this work through the lenses of feminist autotheory and the “artist as ethnographer.” In my attempt to “frame myself within the frame” (Foster), my intention with this work was to understand the implications and concerns regarding the intersection of ethics and artmaking.