Showgirls: Screening and Book Launch

Artist Alison J Carr presents her new short film and book drawing from her research with showgirls. Felicity Means Happiness tells the story of a shared dialogue between 98-year old former chorus girl, Felicity Widdrington, and the artist. Viewing Pleasure and Being a Showgirl, How Do I Look raises questions around representation and contemporary showgirl experiences, and their relevance for feminist debate.

Showgirls: Screening and Book Launch, Thursday 28th February, 6pm to 7.30pm, Free

Felicity Means Happiness is video work that tells the story of a 98-year old former chorus girl. Alison interviewed Felicity about her time dancing in the thirties, in Europe on the cusp of war. Felicity Means Happiness shows Felicity, telling her stories, and Alison showing Felicity her artworks inspired by 1930s dancers, and footage of an Austrian film Felicity was in. The piece is as much about the connection between the artist and Felicity as it is about the realities of dancing and travelling.

Viewing Pleasure and Being a Showgirl, How Do I Look contextualises contemporary showgirl experiences, drawing out their relevance for feminist debate as well as practitioners for example artists and performers. In the book Alison writes about watching different kinds of shows, spectacles, burlesques and cabarets and as well as interviewing showgirls. The book raises questions of how the showgirl is represented, the nature of the pleasure that she elicits and the suspicion that surrounds it, and what this means for feminism and the act of looking.

An embodied articulation of a new politics of looking, Viewing Pleasure and Being a Showgirl engages with the idea (reinforced by feminist critique) that images of women are linked to selling and that women’s bodies have been commodified in capitalist culture, raising the question of whether this enables particular bodies – those of glamorous women on display – to become scapegoats for our deeper anxieties about consumerism.

Booking

This workshop is open to all and free to attend. Please book below (you will be taken through the shopping cart but no charge will be made) or you can call us on 0141 550 2267. If you have booked a place and are no longer able to attend please let us know so that we can make your place available to someone else.

Accessibility

The screening is subtitled.

Glasgow Women’s Library is wheelchair accessible, with lifts to the first floor and the Mezzanine Floor. We have accessible toilets and all the bathrooms are individual closed stalls and are gender neutral. Our larger Events Space is fitted with an induction loop. A portable induction loop is also available. For paid events free companion tickets are available.

Find more information on Accessibility at GWL or contact us and we will be very happy to offer assistance.