MA Degree
1990 - 1992

There is a need for the voyeur to ‘see’ things from the inside and the outside simultaneously – to be director and directed. Because of these shifting positions, classic notions of victimisations do not hold – the voyeur effectively becomes the slave to the object of delight. The ‘I’ becomes the ‘it’, transforming fluidly into an actively passive agent. Consistent with Sadean philosophy, the ‘I’ as active protagonist, becomes the receiver of the action at the same time. Such role reversals subvert and invert traditional linkages between notions of power and victimisation.

The voyeur aspires to make the invisible visible – to embrace it. In so doing, the voyeur saves or redeems the object of the gaze from the continuum of time. Potentially, becoming aware that it is the object of another’s gaze, the attended develops a heightened sense of self.

Ultimately, in the desire for completeness, and in the search for an idealised unity of forces, (however futile), the voyeur is magnetised to continue on the treadmill of yearning.