Video
December 2012

This image holds two screen shots of a video piece I’m currently working to finish. All semester, I investigated surface textures of different bodies and materials to understand what they might have in common with notions of gestation. By that term, I mean processes where something still invisible forms underneath a surface – yet its pressure against the surface announces the impending separation of the two bodies. The result of that separation is unknown and awaited with ambivalent feelings of joy, relief, anxiety, and fear. I was led by an attraction to materials and states of being I perceive as “thick”, a term that resonates very deeply within me but that I’m still struggling to put into words or images. Theoretically, I was led by concepts of the formless, the abject, and the fluid, as defined by writers such as Georges Bataille, Julia Kristeva and Luce Irigaray.

While this is an investigation that is still underway, this video represents the end of the first phase of this work. It is made of images of my body and images of different pieces that I’ve made this semester. The images are overlapped and treated in a way where the different source materials and their surfaces and textures morph into a new presence that is uncanny yet possesses a human warmth at the same time. Skin comes alive with signs and with friction that we don’t necessarily understand, but that make us respond on a visceral level.