CASUAL SHOPPER

Casual Shopper, 1981

​

Premiered at Pacific Film Archive, 1981

Casual Shopper was inspired by three things: the realization that there could be a female ‘flaneuse’ après Walter Benjamin’s flaneur; that a woman’s ‘gaze’ could produce narrative thus countering Laura Mulvey’s famous observation about classic HW film --- that men ‘act’ and women (only) ‘appear’; that visual pleasure could proceed from a ‘feminist perspective’ within cinematic space. See Judith Barry, Casual Imagination, Blasted Allegories, ed. Brian Wallis, MIT press, Cambridge 1987. Casual Shopper is about people who shop casually, those who go to the mall just to browse, at their leisure, when there is nothing
better to do. This is a love story that never advances beyond that which can be imagined, which is never consummated, but which returns to a prosaic scene where demands are exchanged and desire circulates endlessly. Share the fantasy.

Single channel color/stereo video.
3 versions: 3 minute, 6 minute, 28 minute

​

Related publication:

Casual-Shopper, Judith Barry, Download Link

Casual Imagination, Judith Barry, Download Link

Spectacle & Subjectivity, Johanna Drucker, Download Link

Articulate Spatial Projections, Gary Sangster Download Link

Video Excerpt