Kirsty Buchanan
Untitled, 2008
Description
Buchanan's practice is theoretically concerned with voyeurism and the gaze. Sartre's description of the struggle between consciousnesses, which he calls 'the look', has informed her philosophical investigations. The film of Stan Brakhage, an experimental American filmmaker, particularly 'Window, Water, Baby, Moving' (1959) is an example Buchanan notes for its experimental nature, one which is difficult for most people to watch and invokes uncomfortable spectator response. She records the nervous twitching, coughing and sniggering of audience members to a variety of films, such as The Exorcist, to bring to light the affect cinema can have on the physical body and the mental unconscious, and the notion of Foucault's 'Panopticn': when we are aware of being observed, our behaviour alters.
"I was very nervous myself and I felt as if I were putting my friends through hell, that I was punishing them. I gave them no instructions whatsoever, I only asked them to react as naturally as possible. The presence of the camera heightened the anxiety between the couples watching the film. I alternated the couples between sexes and their relationship to each other. The film is only 12 minutes long, so I didn't edit them, I kept them in real time with the intention of keeping true to the actual event."