Today was my first Gap Crit, where I chose a few pieces to put up and receive constructive criticism about them. I found it useful and thought-provoking by the responses I received because it was definitely split in the middle.
The younger and majority of those who were in my year who attended the crit saw what I was doing right away with the emojis and camera girl aspect. I also previously had informal tutorials during booster week by two tutors who were really keen on my idea and keen for me to use the camera girl aspect as a performance piece, and that I wasn’t being insensitive, whereas the two tutors at this crit found that I might be insensitive and not mature enough as a woman to talk about these topics, which I found was an interesting comment to have received. I think this was because of a generation difference, where from my personal experiences and research into this topic was that more and more women were opting to being a camera girl instead of any other sex industry because they could still remain empowered as everything they did was always pretty much in their control, and in Western countries, would not usually be in the camera girl industry because they had to, but because they could. Therefore, the students saw it as a positive thing rather than a negative thing, whereas the tutors saw it as a negative thing that I shouldn’t be talking about because of the negative connotations that hold with sex work and the industry.
They did, however, all agree that I should definitely further my experimenting with the emojis and remain playful with that, which is something I definitely will do. Jordan also mentioned that I should make it clearer in my work with camera girls in the future, if I chose to continue with it, that they did in fact link with the emoji idea, where I could perhaps say “only answer in emojis” or something as a heading for a live show.
saratrouble 