For the Record: Performing Gender For the Record: Performing Gender

For the Record: Performing Gender will examine gender roles and feminist positions in popular music videos. Iconic videos of Madonna and Prince, as well as recent video releases of Sevdaliza and others, will form the basis for a debate on the articulation of gender through the cinematographic gaze and the performing body. The evening will be moderated by radio-dj, reporter and host Shay Kreuger. With Eliza Steinbock (Assistant Professor of Cultural Analysis at Leiden University), Emmanuel Adjei (film director and visual artist) and Gabriel A. Maher (designer).

Emmanuel Adjei is a Dutch-Ghanian film director and visual artist. Creating atmospheric worlds in both a painterly and a cinematic style, Adjei always seeks for the boundary between fiction and reality. Emmanuel's career has collaborated with a variety of artists and brands such as Hugo Boss, Patta, High Snobiety, Asics, Mark Pritchard and Bibio. Most prominently is his artistic relationship with Dutch-Iranian artist Sevdaliza. In the last years, their short film 'The Formula' (2016) and music video 'Human' (2016) received global acclaim. Their most recent music video 'Shahmaran' is a visual cinematic and sonic journey that questions the eternal fascinations and desires of the human mind. It was released in 2018 and represents a milestone moment for both their artistic expressions.

Eliza Steinbock is Assistant Professor of Cultural Analysis at Leiden University's Centre for the Arts in Society, where they are involved in critical diversity issues. Eliza Steinbock is trained in cultural analysis (PhD 2011) and investigates visual culture mediums like film, digital media and photography, with a special focus on dimensions of race, gender and sexuality. Steinbock's current book project is the culmination of a NWO Veni grant on contemporary transgender (self) portraiture in the wider field of visual activism, which includes interviews with trans-identified cultural producers based in Toronto, Berlin, Cape Town and Johannesburg. Steinbock's first book, Shimmering Images: Trans Cinema, Embodiment and the Aesthetics of Changeis is forthcoming with Duke University Press.

An adaption of Eliza Steinbock's talk, examining style, gestures and queer iconicity in the videos of Madonna, Prince and recent music videos is available here.

Gabriel A. Maher is a designer currently living and working in the Netherlands. With a practice established in Interior Architecture and Social Design, their work centers on critical and analytical approaches to design and research. Within this sphere, they consider the effects of design and designing on bodies and the shaping of identity. They investigate relationships between bodies and spaces, objects and systems and media narratives. They deconstruct objects, spaces, sites, material artefacts or technologies to reveal how we - as individuals and communities - are positioned, organised and directed through design and media systems. These deconstructions are articulated in a visually analytic way and materialised as critical tools for dialogue. Their position and approach questions design and media practices through queer and feminist frameworks. To articulate, physicalise and activate this position they seek to create situations where research and design come together in performance.

This evening is part of For the Record, a research project on the technologies, spatial design and forms of representation in contemporary video culture. The event will take the form of a public recording studio, visualizing the forms production and postproduction that are deployed in video and that shape our mediated realities.