Caught Between the Factory and the Home: Re-Visiting Feminist ‘Documentary’ Aesthetics under Globalised Capital

Charlesworth, Amy (2015). Caught Between the Factory and the Home: Re-Visiting Feminist ‘Documentary’ Aesthetics under Globalised Capital. Third Text, 29(1-2) pp. 88–103.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/09528822.2015.1054091

Abstract

This article focuses on María Ruido's video work Real Time (2003), a work that points to the perceived centrality of subjectivity for post- Fordism. Analysis of Real Time is twofold: the body ‘marked’ by capitalism and, concomitantly, the ascendency of the documentary form in contemporary art. The author situates Real Time within the renewed interest in social reproduction and migrant labour in light of the debates around the ‘feminisation’ of global capitalism.

The article charts the importance that the video camera (and its critique) had for the women's movement and feminist artists of the 1970s. It seeks to unpack how and why – and indeed if – such a scarred and marginalised form as the documentary can become critically viable for discussions around what is knowingly termed ‘women's work’. The article uses Real Time to work anachronistically in its exploration of the ‘marked’ working body in contemporary capitalism and the representational methods we might use to ‘see’ and ‘know’ experiences of labour.

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