Julika Rudelius Question/Response

1. How are you affected by feminist ideals? Do you even consider yourself a feminist? I would be interested to see feminist work from a male perspective.
2. What do you hope to gain with your work? Are you trying to effect social change or just make these issues be known?

I really enjoyed Rudelius's lecture today. Seeing her work was actually really beneficial for me because she works a lot in video as well as photography. Seeing how she displays her work with projections gave me some ideas about how I could display my work in the end. The main focus of Julika's work is the representation of truth. She enjoys manipulating the viewer and reality which in the end leaves you wondering what's real and what's not. Her video, The Highest Point, was one of my favorite pieces that she showed us. The original intent of the video was to interview women about their orgasms but from a straight, technical viewpoint. She was able to capture that but she also got much more. The interviewee started fidgeting a lot, rubbing her leg, and basically just posing sexually. It was really interesting to watch the interviewee doing all of these things while talking. She may have been uncomfortable with the subject matter or maybe it's just something she does while talking. It was really interesting social commentary, to see how females are socialized to do these things and appear attractive and appealing at all times. Her other project that I really liked was Forever Short, documenting the lives of rich women in the Hamptons. Hearing these women talk about happiness was an interesting way of looking at the differences between rich and poor and the things that they consider important. I almost felt like I was watching caricatures of these women. I felt like they were putting on a show, which they probably were with cameras rolling on them. Overall I really enjoyed the presentation of her work. A lot of the themes she discusses in her work are themes that I'm interested in as well. I think the way she carries out her projects using video is interesting and something that I would like to pursue in the future.