“Where does play end and art start,” Agnes Varda engages her audience. It is a good question and one that both reflexive and performative modes seem to, not answer, but explore.
For this project, I was inspired by Varda and her playful use of her hands in the documentary, “The Gleaners & I”. The photographs below show a series of shots in which I participated in this play-art that both reflexive and performative films utilize.
For viewers, the pictures are a “construct or representation” of reality (Nichols, 194). A play on realism often reveals the reflexivity of work. I squeeze my cousin Macy, or perhaps I am placing her, into the scene. Playing with the focus and scope, I am able to show two different views of the same action occurring in real time. In the first photograph, the photographer’s hand is emphasized showing importance or dominance as the subject; in the other, the hand is out of focus, but bigger and may appear to be swallowing the smiling-Macy. Both space and the breaking of the fourth wall are being tested.
Although influenced by a performative film (“The Gleaners & I”), the photographs are more telling of the reflexive mode. The photos put the photographer in the scene but not completely. Merely, the viewer is reminded that a photographer is in attendance while taking the photographs but nothing more is known about the photographer nor her interests or personal life. If I had wanted this project to be performative I would have found a way to include more of myself within it, which would show the “clearly subject, affect-laden phenomenon” that is a principle of performative films, but not so much reflexive (Nichols, 201). In fact the only two factors that these photographs don’t have is both the visceral and/or social or political stake that often comes with the performative mode.
The photos illustrate an example of relationship between the filmmaker and the viewer, which Nichols calls “the process of negotiation” (194). This is reminiscent of Vertov’s wife cutting strips of film as well as the employment of Vietnamese-American women to portray the stories of Vietnamese women in “Surname Viet”. The filmmaker or artist is in control of how reality is shown and enjoys reminding the audience that this is so.