Framing Madame B: Quotation and Indistinction in Mieke Bal and Michelle Williams Gamaker’s Video Installation

Dorota  Filipczak

doi:10.1515/texmat-2015-0017

Authors

Dorota Filipczak University of Łódź

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1515/texmat-2015-0017

Abstract

The article engages with the video installation Madame B by Mieke Bal and Michelle Williams Gamaker. The work was premiered in the city of Łódź in Poland (between 6 Dec. 2013 and 9 Feb. 2014). The author makes use of the exhibition brochure by two artists published by the Museum of Modern Art, and the recording of a seminar held by Bal and Williams Gamaker after launching their work. The article focuses on the innovative audiovisual interpretation of Flaubert’s famous novel. Basing the argument on the concept of framing created by Bal, the author applies it to Bal and Williams Gamaker’s exhibition by relating it to the history and culture of the Polish location where it was first shown. Above all, however, the article discusses the importance of quotation and indistinction in Madame B, where the artists quote from (among others): Louise Bourgeois, Maya Deren, Artemisia Gentileschi, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, William Kentridge and Sol LeWitt.

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Author Biography

Dorota Filipczak, University of Łódź

Dorota Filipczak teaches British and postcolonial literature as well as translation theory in the Department of British Literature and Culture, University of Łódź. Her monograph on Malcolm Lowry was published in The Malcolm Lowry Review (Wilfrid Laurier University, Ontario, 1998–99). Her recent publications are Unheroic Heroines: The Portrayal of Women in the Writings of Margaret Laurence (Łódź University Press, 2007) and “Is Literature Any Help in Liberating Eve and Mary?” in New Topics in Feminist Philosophy of Religion, ed. Pamela Sue Anderson (Springer, 2010). With Agata Handley she co-edited Bringing Landscape Home in the Writings of Jane Urquhart (Łódź University Press, 2010). She has published five books of poetry, and is a member of the Association of Polish Writers.

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