I began this year with a question: What do the products of deconstructive processes actually signify? The lengthier version: Can deconstruction truly result in a discovery that tells us something more about the original whole, or is this outcome an inversion--closer to a reflection of the deconstructionist, rather than a deepening of knowledge on the ‘thing’ or 'idea’ they set out to take apart? Just spouting these ideas into thin air gave me little to work with; I needed a more tangible way to approach these questions.
Finally, my thoughts revisited a class discussion from a Feminist Theory course taught by Jen Boyle the previous semester. (Hooray for the liberal arts education, where everything is interconnected!) Jen compared the process of deconstruction (and its often reflexive nature) to the acts of dissection, appropriation, and re-creation found in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; A Modern Prometheus--where the hideousness of the monster's constructed outer being mirrors Dr. Frankenstein's inner madness. This metaphor provided me with a means to begin the research that would eventually lead to my own process of creation.
I immersed myself in everything and anything that referenced Frankenstein. In addition to reading/rereading the novel and many critical essays about the book, I watched films that attempted to create their own variation of the story and its basic themes. These films included Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein by James Whale, Edward Scissorhands by Tim Burton, The Spirit of the Beehive by Victor Erice, and The Golem by Paul Wegener. Once I became familiar with my source material, it seemed that the most logical route toward making my ideas visible would be through my own simulation of Frankenstein themes. So I began by appropriating movement (like stealing body parts) from the very texts I had delved into during my initial research. I learned some of the staged movement from the Whale films and recorded myself as I reenacted them. I also went through Shelley's novel to extract single words or short passages that described movement. I then used an audio recorder as I read these actions aloud, so that I could later employ them as oral directions to myself during movement improvisation. Each of these structured improv's occurred in front of a camera. I then took this video footage of my appropriations, and began to dissect it using iMovie. I cut it apart, slowed it down, and reassembled it entirely outside of my present moving body, but watched the very image of my past moving body be re-created on the computer screen. When I found juxtapositions that sparked my interest, I brought them back to life by relearning the movement in its new sequence/form. By following this system of research, appropriation, dissection, and reconstruction I was able to embody the roles of creator/creation--I existed as both Dr. Frankenstein and his monster.
During this time of simulation, my creative endeavors of deconstructing to then reconstruct were not limited to movement. I also applied a similar system to my poetry. I became fascinated with a writing exercise that suggests taking words or quotes from the works of other authors to create your own. The authors that I borrowed from include Kathy Acker, Cherrie Moraga, Nella Larsen, and Jeanette Winterson. bell hooks says that by creating new relationships, we create new meaning. I believe that my poems generated through this cutting and pasting methodology do evoke a sense of the original works I appropriated, but the new relationships between the words on the page also convey a multitude of fresh meanings, perhaps deeply imbedded in my perception of the originals all along. To read two examples of my writing during this process stage click here .
Some speculate that Mary Shelley's choice, as a female pen, to write Frankenstein from an entirely male perspective was from a place of irony. In her novel, Doctor Victor Frankenstein and his nameless male monster both experience a loss of rationality, if not a loss of sanity into the realm of hysterics. It is her depiction of male hysteria that creates a sense of irony. People are sometimes described as hysterical when they are upset, excited, and unable to "get a hold of themselves" so to speak. Hippocrates was the first to identify this as a disorder. He claimed that mostly women suffered from hysteria and thought it's cause was a "displaced uterus". In fact, the word hysteria comes from hystera, the Greek word for uterus. Shelley turns these absurd theories around by using hysteric male voices to tell a tale of a man who essentially performs a mock birth. Thus, Frankenstein can be read as a sarcastic story of male womb envy-- "a woman's desire to write and a man's desire to give birth would both be capable only of producing monsters" (Berthold Schoene-Harwood).
During my process that would lead to The Skull-Headed Lady, I was well aware that much of the movement I appropriated was depicting a state of hysterics. The last thing I wanted was for my moving body to become just another hysterical female body on stage. So I attempted to hint at my own underlying sarcasm, or at very least my self-awareness of what it means to be a female dancing body, by working with a female mannequin (affectionately named Francine) who can be taken apart and reassembled with ease. By adding Francine, The Skull-Headed Lady became a duet between my living/moving female body, and the inanimate representation of a female body. By the end of the piece both Francine and I are transformed, and it is questionable which one of us is more alive, or more human than the other.
