Q: What were your expectations before joining the collective you are now a part of?
A: The first is proving one’s self-worth. During the recruitment of art industries, male’s expertise is more readily recognized than women’s. The female appearance is sometimes recognized with an ornamental implication. In this circumstance, art institutions hope to leverage your appearance advantage and aesthetic value. However, females want people to recognize their professional skills instead of their appearance.
Another thing is in the art industry, what they want is to maintain the status-quo. Females are always hopeful for this industry, but society is exploiting female expectations. They understand that they have to compromise because they need to establish themselves. It provides further excuses for the industry to assign females to multitask. One strange phenomenon is that they want females to undertake the traditional wife’s role while maintaining their independence. This provides more excuses for patriarchal discourse to exploit females, which is the lie of “independent females.”
Q: In this collective, apart from being an artist, what would you describe as your main role within it? Can you give us an example?
A: My role in the collective is more orientated towards the character director. My role is to analyse specific roles and compare the differences in the presentation of the roles by different actors, in order to construct a link between the roles and the actors, and thus to reach the differences in the presentation of the roles by different actors in the process of performing the roles.
Q: How are the roles distributed within the collective? (Who oversees assigning roles?) And why (you or them).
A: In the realm of film distribution, a central figure, often a director or producer, assumes the pivotal role of holding the financial resources. It is noteworthy that these individuals, possessing the core authority, predominantly belong to the male demographic. This gender disparity can be attributed to the historical issue of primitive capital accumulation within the patriarchal discourse system. In the existing social discourse system dominated by men, their higher education levels and the preferential allocation of resources enable them to more easily amass capital and assume positions of power within a team. Although women do have some opportunities to access discursive power, these instances are limited, with the theatre industry being one notable exception due to its close ties to the cultural entertainment sector. In the field of entertainment, women are frequently regarded as having a greater ability to connect with others. Consequently, when decisions are made by those with financial resources, there is a noticeable transfer of influence towards women who possess a heightened awareness of the trends and dynamics within the entertainment and cultural industries. Nevertheless, it is important to recognize that this does not equate to women having complete control over the narrative. Although it may appear so superficially, the true authority over discourse remains predominantly in the hands of men.
Q: Have there been any instances where you have been treated differently to your male colleagues?
A: From one perspective, we must consider the matter of appearance, as previously indicated in my initial inquiry. Indeed, it is worth noting that the disparity within the realm of theatre is not as pronounced when compared to the field of photography. Nevertheless, it is a common perception among men that women possess a certain delicateness and are incapable of undertaking physically demanding tasks. However, when it comes to actual work, there is not such a big difference, women are just undervalued in advance.