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The matter between me and you

Video still - Sophia New

In a child's den with carpets and cushions a video monitor shows a mother and daughter struggling to get a Tupperware box out of the freezer in the kitchen at home. At the dining room table they discuss what they once shared as the contents of the box melts. Together they reflect upon biology, rituals, materiality, and corporeality. They invent games, questions, songs and stories to delight and distract one another from that which intrigues and disgusts them: the matter that has been lurking in the freezer for nine years.

[Blankets, rugs and cushions as a den. Flat screen monitor and headphones. HD duration '30 min]


Curiouser and Curiouser

With air travel becoming cheaper and distances smaller, the choice of where one lives becomes extended but questions of where one is from or what is home becomes more complex. Dressed as a hybrid of Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz and Alice in Wonderland I walked the streets, parks, airports, hotels, houses, flats and beaches of the places I encountered in the last six months among them a house in Bristol, a studio in Berlin, Munich Airport, and a beach in Newcastle. This walking became a contemplative questioning of place. A dialogue between these two characters emerged as a way of elucidating questions that were pressing for me. These letters were a way of me wearing my heart on my sleeve.

These walking sections were shot using the video function on a digital stills camera, I liked the degraded, almost super 8 quality and the reduced frame rate, I also felt freed by looking like I was just looking at photos rather than filming. The other material was made by capturing straight to a computer.

Curiouser and Curiouser is to be viewed on a small screen installed into a musical box. This piece is an Isis Commission and premieres in Newcastle 28 April 2005. [duration 7’03” – mixed media]

Deadheading

During the spring I enjoy the daily task of deadheading my window box hoping that more flowers will come. Living on the fourth floor I loved watching the petals dance down to the ground catching passers-by or decorating cars. I decided to film this process. Deadheading became a series of QuickTime movies that I shot using a digital stills camera video function and made an edited loop that was then played on a PDA that was installed back into the same window box. Due to my concern for the flowers and the PDA I obviously could not water the plants, hence this installation cannot be shown for long periods of time without careful management. Deadheading was shown at the multimedia festival Trampoline 3 June 2004, at Prater, Berlin
[duration 4’03” looped QuickTime movies]

How I loved you until I could no longer see you

Video still - Sophia New

How I loved you until I could no longer see you is a single screen video for a monitor. It takes some of the concerns from an early solo Jammy Lips (1999) where I was interested in exploring the notion of the filmic close up and the attempt to create a close up in performance. The area of particular interest was that of the mouth, as a site of female sexuality and of speech (although there is no directly spoken text in the piece).

The video performance is a portrait of myself that gradually appears through the removal of kiss-prints. The lens switches focus between the fore-grounded lip prints and my face in the background. This repeated performance action of mark making deliberately plays with the video frame and gaze of the viewer.

The piece is meant for a monitor in order to keep the piece life-sized and play with the idea of a frame, both of the camera and the monitor.
[Duration 6’47” – mini DV]

When no one was looking, I snuck backstage

Video still - Sophia New

When no one was looking, I snuck backstage is a piece designed for large projection screen. The piece is shot in a disused back stage, dark and spacious. Initially the viewer just hears the sound of exhausted fast breath and then the image of a blue light rope appears. After some time a female figure starts to skip – but is only seen as a silhouette and heard as the body touches the floor and as the light rope periodically hits the ground. As the light rope jump cuts to other colours – red, white and eventually yellow – the viewer gradually sees more of the figure. By the colour white and yellow you can make out that the female figure is naked and for a second you see the body in mid-air before the light is behind the body making it a silhouette again.
[duration 4’35” – mini DV]

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