interpretative DISRUPTION

This node is all about how to make meaning through interpretative disruption. In simplest terms, meaning comes from recognizing a deviation from convention. Discover how it’s done in the following display…

To start, here is a group of images that all display women in a way that invites you to survey their bodies. Consider how this convention for display constructs an objectifying gaze.

A painting of an ornately attired woman in profile drawing a bow and aiming at a target out of frame, as two other women of similar appearance look on.
A female archer stands at the center of the frame, aiming toward a target on the left, as a crowd of onlookers watch and another archer awaits her turn.
Illustration showing ladies participating in a competitive archery event. Dramatic central figure with her bow drawn, aiming her arrow to the right, as other women prepare to shoot.

Once you’ve noticed the representational convention and its effect, use the following collage as a medium to see how convention can be reconfigured to disrupt the gaze. Collage technique performs disruption by taking existing forms and reconstructing them into a new view. It’s a visual enactment of disruption as interpretative process.

Look Out! Disrupting the Gaze, handmade and digitized collage

Now the archers aim directly at the viewer. Notice those bicycling women coming at you too? They signal how disruption of a previous representational form makes way for new conventions of display to be established.

Practice interpretative DISRUPTION

Use moments of disruption to see how the female body is becoming active. How does this change the relation between the female subjects and you as the viewer?

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