Abstract

This article brings a phenomenological account of the body into dialogue with theories of gender performativity, through an analysis of performance artist Cathy Sisler’s videos Aberrant Motion #1 (1993) and Aberrant Motion #4 (1994). In the work I discuss, Sisler foregrounds he limits of visibility and employs a visual mode which is more haptic than strictly optic. At the same time, the work makes explicit the power of visibility to regulate, control and mark out the subject and critiques the effect of the gaze upon structures of identity formation and, crucially, the motility of the body. I argue that in this work, the viewer’s relation to the images is severed from the visual mastery associated with the modes of viewing which position Sisler as ‘other’, but which remain vitally at stake within the haptic visual economy she creates.