The Camera's Peformativity as an Emancipatory Gesture

This article focuses on the history of the performativity of cinema, a technical medium that, by definition, excludes traditionally understood forms of performativity. Central to this inquiry – drawing on Dieter Mersch’s and Vilém Flusser’s theories – is the identification of moments when filmmakers employ technology non-technically, against its prescribed use. Such camera gestures can be understood in relation to the original meaning of technē, which does not signify mere making, fabrication, or utilization of tools, but rather the revealing or uncovering of the truth of things. The core of the article is the camera in the hands of feminist filmmakers, whose performative camera use attempts to discover a feminine handwriting and an autonomous expressive mode. The classical, male-dominated cinematic narrative can be disrupted through long takes, unconventional axes of movement, unusual distances and angles, panoramic rotation of the camera, and recording with atypical devices, techniques, and technologies. The camera is no longer hidden and concealed; on the contrary, it is made visible, emphasized, and presented to viewers as a means of demonstrating alternative possibilities. Such a camera may be used for thinking differently – subversively, expressively, experimentally, and, crucially for this study, performatively. The camera comes to the foreground, interrupting and unsettling. This article shows how this performative camera has been realised in the work of selected women filmmakers and asks what role it might serve today, how it might reveal other perspectives and offer new modes of negotiation with the technology that continuously surrounds us.