The matter between me and you
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
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
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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