artist statement

I am not a whore in the traditional sense. I want to give everything for free. I want to give everything. I want to give it to you, even if you do not want it. I need to give this to you,
Now. Because it matters.

My work is silent but loud. I want to gently strip away your skin and touch you underneath. I want to insert a needle, or maybe a thorn from a flower.
How do you feel?
Please tell me.
These dances come to existence from a need to speak, to ask, to participate. The form that they take is the form that offers itself for me to find a way in. I am looking for a way in, into your mind, your body. The work is created in our meeting. It does not exist without you.
I make work to understand the world around me, to make sense of what may have none. I dance to map what otherwise is incomprehensible to me. I am attempting to see the world through a poetics of the body, which is to feel and to be felt.
My work asks what is important. What do we care about? What were the choices that brought us here? They are questions I ask of myself, and I try to lie less every time I answer. I go towards discomfort, because it is a mobilizing force. I place naïveté above cynicism: it does not make me look good but it helps me see what is here. I move in a guise of confusion, of embarrassment and not knowing, because the constant reminder of how little I understand forces me to actually learn.


Tuesday, October 6, 2009

sk/in/visibility

this is the second version i made with a few changes
after the CAP mid term critique.



about the comments and how i want to continue:

i showed this to other people after the critique, but only in private situations, because i had become afraid of displaying the captive female body as an object of desire.
i especially asked for people to comment on that aspect, but only after they had seen it. no-one had looked at it from that angle. they saw terror, and they made connections to the cultural images that i had been citing, which the people in the class did not see or comment on. i was relieved to hear this work read as bringing the female body visible in the imagery of terror, where it has only been male bodies in the news, the female bodies absent and silent.
with encouragement from viewers i left out the question in the end, because they said that the question is already visible in the work. i hoped it would be. and i don't want to narrow it down to just that one question, words have such power over us sometimes.

about making changes:

1. i am going to re-shoot the feet in front of the box.
2. i do not want to show more kneading of the bread. i want it to be seen only once, maybe a millisecond longer than in this version, but no more.
3. i do not want to shoot the eating of the bread: the eating is part of the event, it is not to be looked at but to be participated in.
4. the making of the bread has to be shot and re-edited every time, because i want people to be eating the same bread that is in the video. this poses some limitations to where and when the work can be shown.
5. i would be grateful for more feedback and discussion about why you felt (if you felt) it was primarily an object of desire in the box. i have looked at this over and over and i do not agree. i am not sure that i want to change my imagery, but i need more discussion to make that choice.

Posted by at

2 comments:

  1. Dr Simone PatersonOctober 15, 2009 at 10:05 AM

    Glad that you are thinking and reworking. Stripped of all intention, how can the work be read? I posed possibilities to you during review. You might consider reading, 'Volatile bodies: toward a corporeal feminism' By Elizabeth Grosz.
    I admire your courage and ultimately you have little control on how your work is read by others without you "feeding" (in reference to your bread) them your intentions. My job as an educator is to encourage you to question your intentions and help you to define and refine your direction. Also to help you "see" the work, (we are often too close to really know what we have created - this only comes with time). Keep questioning. However you will know with a strength of conviction when your work is the best it can be.

    ReplyDelete
  2. nòROctober 15, 2009 at 3:41 PM

    wow, what a coincidence, i just got the book - it was on sale for $2 and it's next to me while i'm reading your message...

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)