Disegno #15, Gendered Objects collaboration with Disegno Magazine, with editors Oli Stratford & Kristina Rapacki & Philosopher, Nina Power, In collaboration with Disegno Magazine
Words: Nina Power | Montages: Gabriel Maher
Image maker’s note: While dissecting the press release images of objects referenced in the text, I was particularly struck by the absence of the body in the photography. These objects were mostly center-aligned, singular, rather lonesome and captured without human interaction. Deconstructing these object images made it possible to locate lines of desire in the fragments. Remixing these fragments, brought them together again in unexpected ways and produced a certain performativity. At the same time, this process skewed and exaggerated their original reading. The new arrangements and object combinations started to present with ‘camp’ sensibilities and elements of personification. This transformation summoned the aesthetic techniques of Montage and Drag and reveled in reproductions of suitably dragged-objects and images. The montage fragments directly reference specific objects and moments described in the text, so the final images are bound to these delicious textual-sexual descriptions – Gabriel .A. Maher
Essay: Gendered Objects pp. 46-56
Writer’s note: It struck me while writing this piece just how functionally androgynous much design is, and how more could be that way too. I thought a lot about the bicycle’s role in the emancipation of women and the way in which, while we may laugh at objects that are pointlessly gendered, we don’t always think about the hidden gendered qualities of objects. Unless we use a language that genders everything – and even then we might forget – Nina Power
Chamber – chambernyc.com De Castelli – decastelli.it