• Journal of English Language & Literature
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• v.60 no.2
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• pp.365-389
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• 2014

The essay focuses on the relationship between the soldiers and the oppressed women in Lynn Nottage's Ruined (2009) in terms of Julia Kristeva's abject to show how the abjected Congolese women expose the falsehood of the order and identity that the military forces try to construct and maintain by war and violence. According to Kristeva, the abject is something that is rejected for the repulsion and horror it arouses but constantly draws the subject to it at the same time. Physically impaired and socially stigmatized, sexually abused Congolese women find a shelter in Mama Nadi's bar, the only place where they can continue their lives as the abject since the place, like the women themselves, lies outside the symbolic order occupied and corrupted by the men of DRC. Although the men involved in the armed conflict have abjected the women in pursuit of their own system and order, the women are not simply the objects of abuse and oppression. The men have to rely on Mama Nadi and her women not only to reaffirm their identity and power by suppressing them but also to fulfill their biological needs. In addition, the women's resistance against the soldiers demonstrates their power to challenge the men's symbolic order and expose its frailty. Apropos of the abject's resistance, various artistic genres such as poetry, music and dance appear in the play as an escape from the grim reality and a means of challenging and transcending the symbolic order. Bringing all these artistic elements together into a powerful piece of theatre-often considered as an 'abject' genre nowadays, Nottage demonstrates both the power of theatre as well as the tenacious Congolese women.

• Cartoon and Animation Studies
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• s.49
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• pp.697-712
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• 2017

In recent years, film and animation for cinematic release have embraced stereoscopic vision and the three-dimensional depth it creates for the viewer. The maturation of consumer-level virtual reality (VR) technology simultaneously spurred a wave of media productions set within 3D space, ranging from computer games to pornographic videos, to Academy Award-nominated animated VR short film Pearl. All of these works rely on stereoscopic fusion through stereopsis, that is, the perception of depth produced by the brain from left and right images with the amount of binocular parallax that corresponds to our eyes. They aim to emulate normal human vision. Within more experimental practices however, a fully rendered 3D space might not always be desirable. In my own abstract animation work, I tend to favour 2D flatness and the relative obfuscation of spatial relations it affords, as this underlines the visual abstraction I am pursuing. Not being able to immediately understand what is in front and what is behind can strengthen the desired effects. In 2015, Jeffrey Shaw challenged me to create a stereoscopic work for Animamix Biennale 2015-16, which he co-curated. This prompted me to question how stereoscopy, rather than hyper-defining space within three dimensions, might itself be used to achieve a confusion of spatial perception. And in turn, how abstract and experimental moving image practices can benefit from stereoscopy to open up new visual and narrative opportunities, if used in ways that break with, or go beyond stereoscopic fusion. Noteworthy works which exemplify a range of non-traditional, expanded approaches to binocular vision will be discussed below, followed by a brief introduction of the stereoscopic animation loop III=III which I created for Animamix Biennale. The techniques employed in these works might serve as a toolkit for artists interested in exploring a more experimental, expanded engagement with stereoscopy.