Women Cinemakers been fascinated with the way this stimulating installation captures the expressive potential of found materials to subvert their significances, allowing you to create completely new narratives out of previous ones. German art critic and historian Michael Fried once stated that 'materials do not represent, signify, or allude to anything; they are what they are and nothing more.' What were the properties that you were searching for in the materials that you include in ? Materials speak to me with their own codified language and history and I listen intensively. I prefer to mash up and assemble unsuitable, often discarded detritus of our lives, memories, past events, nostalgic moments. Each project calls for it’s own vocabulary of materials and objects and in , I explored ideas of post industrial wasteland, collecting unwanted, left-over ingredients on the streets, situating them on site in an installation resembling a post-apocalyptic, post-future world. Over the years your works have been exhibited both in the USA and abroad: Marina Abramovic once remarked the importance of not just making work but ensuring that it’s seen in the right place by the right people at the right time: how is in your opinion online technosphere affecting the consumption of art by the audience? Do you think that today it is easier to speak to a particular niche of viewers or that online technology will allow artist to extend to a broader number of viewers the interest towards a particular theme? We do tend to look at everything through the screen today, often without leaving our immediate environments. However, I think art can still provide a highly engaging sensorial, physical, visceral response and pleasure for our body and mind. I do hope that side of it never disappears. Perhaps, that’s why I gravitate towards the handmade in my work, allowing my whole body to interact with materiality and the corporeal world I inhabit, to feel present, alive, contemporary. I look at the digital world and internet in a positive light, it allows me to reach my audiences globally, to share my thoughts and making process, to reveal and conceal, to seduce and alert. I utilize social media often and am interested in it’s capability to broaden my scope. Over the years your artworks have been showcased in a number of occasions and you had seven solos, including your recent show System Failure at Martin Art Gallery: how do you consider the relationship with your audience? Are you particularly interested into triggering particular sensation or do you prefer that your spectators
Women Cinemakers elaborate personal interpretations for your artworks? My relationship with my audience alternates depending on the project, location and the mediums, however I’m mostly attracted to ambiguity, allowing for enough space for various personal interpretations of my work to occur. Some of my projects do require a direct intention or delivery of meaning, especially politically charged work, but in general, I’m less interested in designing any specific direct objective, essentially confusing the viewer. Before leaving this conversation we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in contemporary art scene. For more than half a century women have been discouraged from producing something 'uncommon', however in the last decades there are signs that something is changing. How would you describe your personal experience as an unconventional artist? And what's your view on the future of women in this interdisciplinary field? Although we are definitely moving in the right direction and things are changing, be it at a glacial pace, I think women have been culturally undervalued, underappreciated and misrepresented for far too long. In the now infamous words of Eileen Myles, men should take a vacation from arts production for a while: “
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Women Cinemakers My personal experience of noncompliance basically suggests, that if I was a man, my work would be valued much more, I might even be making money from it, recognized and accepted on a much larger and global scale, who knows, if only I didn't focus so much on making work about my experience as a woman, I might do so much better, despite my so called ”unconventionality”. It is not an easy road, a somewhat uncharted territory in the dark, with the only light source sometimes coming from my own belief and will. We are not in an equal world. I’m hopeful though, many more women are succeeding in the filed and mountains are shifting. However, it does feel like it would take another century for our voices, lives, stories and legacies to be valued and placed into history on equal footing in all fields. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Katya. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? I am currently expanding my practice into three new-ish territories for me: public art projects and commissions, longer length filmmaking with a cast and a crew and series of large scale paintings, all focusing around the themes of female gaze and desire, gender constructions, identity and migration. I’d like to see my work growing and reaching new audiences on a global scale.
We would like to introduce you to our readers with a couple of questions about your background. You have a solid formal training and after having earned your BA An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected] (Hons) Fine Art (2:1) from Central Saint Martins College of Arts and Design, you nurtured your education with a Masters in Fine Art (Distinction), that you received from the Chelsea College of Art and Design: how did these experiences inform your artistic evolution? Could you tell us what are your most important influences and how did they affect your art practice? Karen Piddington Women Cinemakers meets My fascination is with awkward conjunctions and contradictions between people and animals. I use ambiguity, absurdity and humour to blur boundaries, and to question ways in which we relate to other species. We cannot escape our humanness but the point of my work is to consider the possibility of becoming something other I find a position of sameness with animals. I step into their world to explore it not from a separate human position but from a position of animality. Our similarities are juxtaposed, magnified and exaggerated to create paradoxical scenes, re-presenting definitions of humanness. I began studying animal politics and philosophy ten years ago and looked at how animals are represented in art and popular culture. My work is closely bound up in the notion of becoming-animal, with humans straying into the psychological territories of animals. Becoming-animal is above and below the threshold of perception and presents us with an alternative way of thinking about identity. I work with film, video performance, sound and photography. I also draw, and make sculptures and installations. My video performances are an exploration of animality as a psychological space in which to communicate differently; to behave, move and even see differently. My performances are unplanned and unscripted, and feature slow, subconscious movements, as if outside human time and space. Narrative and reality appear dislocated. Using a playful and serious intent, my aim is for the viewer to lose self awareness. Animals feature as the protagonists in my work. Like a wildlife documentary film maker, I film animals in their natural habitat. Slow motion is prevalent, taking the film out of documentary mode and turning it into the medium of the animal. I hold open a space of ambiguity and position myself in that space with the animal. I like the power of the living animal’s role as itself in art as it inadvertently suppresses the human
Women Cinemakers Studying at Central Saint Martins (CSM) and Chelsea really helped to broaden my awareness and open my eyes to the world in many different ways – I’m interested in life and curious about so many aspects of it. Art connects us to life on lots of levels, and I began to see clearly the relationship between art and philosophy, politics and history. I also began to see how art connects to mythology, folklore and the imagination. I also discovered how my practice relates to art history. At art school I found inspiration in other artists, including staff and other students, and in simply being in that creative environment. It was a great place to experiment and grow. There was loads of freedom to work collaboratively in any discipline, to use workshops and play with a huge variety of materials and tools. The technical expertise on hand was a huge bonus, and all of this broadened and informed my practice. It was at CSM that I was introduced to post-production processes and I went on to teach myself how to edit my films (images and audio). Until then I had mainly used sculpture, installation and drawings but I found myself making props and using everyday objects in video performance. I would construct stage scenes, for example, for use in my films and photographs. So for me, moving from sculpture to film felt like a very natural transition. Then, as I became more involved with film, I grew more confident in trying out different camera angles, and manipulating speed, scale, brightness and composition of stage set-ups and film clips. My work now is a language that has become increasingly layered. It was very early on at CSM that animals began to emerge as my subject matter and they quickly became the focus of my research. I began studying animal politics and philosophy, and looked at how animals are represented in art and popular culture. At that time, animals in art were still viewed as kitsch by some, but I didn’t let that concern me. Perceptions of animals in art have changed, particularly since the 1990s, and in my view even more so in the last eight years or so. I became increasingly interested in the relationship and communications between interview
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers humans and animals, and this – often referred to as the political or postmodern animal – now forms a fundamental part of my practice. I wanted to get close to ‘the animal’ without worrying about the consequences. Deleuze and Guatarri’s concept ‘Becoming-animal’ helped me to contextualise my work and to grasp the specific presence of the animal. It was while I was studying for my master’s degree that animality really began to function as a creative space within which I became able to imagine myself as other; becoming animal through a process of detachment. What goes on in the mind of animals is unknown and unknowable, and it is this that opens up an imaginative world, allowing me to visualise myself as other – to experience a shared interspecies awareness. Through the abandonment of subjectivity I am now able to access a sense of otherness, and through the use of absurdity the audience is invited to go beyond human thought, to dream. I’m interested in creating new and unfamiliar spaces for seeing and thinking about animals. There have been many influences on my art practice but I think, aside from animals themselves, the very early childhood influences were films like Kes by Ken Loach. Kes had such a powerful effect on me as a child. It was unlike any other film of the time. Most fictional kids’ programmes and films were too posh and public school. They featured kids I just couldn’t relate to. But Kes was different. It was about the real world, it wasn’t about privilege. It features a working class boy called Billy Casper from a coal mining community who comes upon a kestrel and teaches himself to take care of it. He trains it and discovers an ability to communicate in a way that he has never done before. For me, the film reveals in a most powerful way the animal’s otherness - a pureness. I was mesmerised by Billy’s close relationship with the bird. That interspecies consciousness captured the shared animality I’m interested in today. I’ve always thought that animals interview
have a hotline to the Universe or God – they are closer to whatever or wherever it is that we come from and go to. This film made me want to experience that special connection like Billy and Kes. Other early influences were Hitchcock’s The Birds, as well as the more mainsteam and romanticised children’s TV programmes of the time such as Daktari, featuring, among other animals, a cross-eyed lion. At art school I looked to artists such as Edwina Ashton, Carolee Schneemann, Marcus Coates and Joseph Beuys; and more recently to Marvin Gaye Chetwynd, and the work of film-makers David Lynch, Reiner Fassbinder and Peter Greenway – and many others - as well as Ovid’s epic poem Metamorphosis. You are an eclectic artist and your practice includes film, video performance, sound and photography, as well as sculptures and installations, revealing the ability of crossing from a media to another: before starting to elaborate about your artistic production, we would invite to our readers to visit https://www.karenpiddington.co.uk in order to get a
synoptic idea about your artistic production: would you tell us what does address you to such captivating multidisciplinary approach? How do you select a medium and an art discipline in order to explore a particular theme? Animals feature as the protagonists in my work. It’s a recent departure for me to film live animals performing as themselves on film. I discovered the animal is powerful as itself, it has a powerful presence, revealing unknown characteristics and distinctive physical detail. It’s a good way of getting beyond representation. Animals are striking, exuberantly visual. I hold open a space where there is ambiguity and I position myself in that space with the animal. Like a wildlife documentary film maker, I film animals in their natural habitat. The real and imagined are interwoven to create communication that is less language driven. The lines are blurred between species to create a kind of non-identity. I film lots of different clips and images; I record things that interest me and I then bank them until I find a use for them
Women Cinemakers one day. It’s a free associative method I use to collect images and put them together – I just explore and experiment and go into the unknown continuously. My work must be allowed to take on a life of its own. I cannot be too prescriptive. I have to be free and the work needs to be given space in order to be spontaneous – almost as if it is a beast in its own right! Working across disciplines opens up more possibilities to me – it allows me to shift easily from one approach or process to another. I am interested in how an image is transformed through different mediums, and the effects of working outdoors or in the dark, for example. Free-standing sculptures and drawings tend to perform alongside my video projections within an exhibition space – I see them as one, an interaction or dialogue. My decision making process is very intuitive. I let the work guide my choices and decisions – very much a ‘gut’ thing; I follow my gut feeling. It’s a very experimental process, which I find allows the work to evolve in its own way. For this special edition of WomenCinemakers we have selected a captivating experimental film that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article and that can be viewed at https://youtu.be/wmlFmxv9xs0. When walking our readers through the genesis of this work, would you tell us how did you develop the initial idea? About ten years ago, I read an article regarding shamanic rituals and how animal spirits possess certain attributes; for example, slugs understand the value of humour. This notion really struck a chord and became a great inspiration to me – the idea that we share humour presented a rich imaginative arena of otherness to me. It opened up a new way of thinking about slugs and I’ve been exploring them ever since, as well as other animals. See, for
Women Cinemakers example, the images Full slug; Slugs understand the value of humour; I massage slugs; Brighton beach; and Post-election hoohaa’. Slugs are not cute, fluffy animals adored by social media audiences and this is the attraction for me; they are considered innately repulsive pests, with their slippery mucous coating and wavelike contractions. They cause horror to those in close proximity and people destroy them with salt and beer traps. I was interested in taking this animal, which many would consider among the most unpleasant of domestic neighbours, and placing it in a human-animal relationship to see how we would then feel about it. It is not so much the animal but the relationship to it. I wanted to try things out and to see how preconceptions of the species might be affected. In terms of materials, the transition to make something grandiose from something that’s incredibly low economy and simple is exciting – such as Full slug, where a giant papier-maché slug receives a full-body aromatherapy massage. For my latest work, Not only do slugs understand the value of humour..., two films are presented simultaneously in the same darkened space, projected onto opposite walls. Sound – a sonic abstraction – of a kind of animal or something other worldly engulfs the space, in which the viewer is placed centrally. In one film a woman can be seen performing what appears to be strange tricks with fruit to an audience of slugs. The location is unclear. The context is stripped of conventional indicators to disorientate the viewer. Reality and narrative appear dislocated, dreamlike. The other film shows a very close-up view of the fruit, from ground level – from a slug’s perspective perhaps. It almost
mirrors the performance in the first film – but not quite. Something is amiss; the timing is off. I did not think about conveying meaning. What the work means evolves from the work itself but it was my intention that the viewer loses their self awareness. We have appreciated the way your video mixes the ordinary with the abstract to reveal mysterious qualities of movement and unconscious impulses of the animal: how do you consider this aspect of your practice? I juxtapose, manipulate and embellish the ordinary with the absurd. I find that using slow motion contributes to the abstract and under-the-surface mood, and reveals mysterious qualities of movement and unconscious impulses of the animal. The unexpected effect of slowing the footage takes it out of documentary mode and transforms it into a piece of work in the medium of the animal. The animal on film can be an enormous problem because it is too real. They are simultaneously vividly present and bewilderingly absent – this dichotomy presents me with a creative space in which to explore. An animal’s will and resistance mean that it is ‘not a sitter’ and I feel that being calm, quiet and perceptive makes it possible to see hidden things, and reveals ordinary movements and impulses in an abstract way. Never far from my thoughts are John Berger’s sentiments on animals hunting at twilight: ‘unexpectedly in the half-light of glimpses we catch sight of another visible order which intersects with ours and yet has nothing to do with it. As if we see between two frames, a visible order that isn’t destined for us.’ I’m involved with the idea of layering – placing multiple things at once in a composition; things that don’t necessary marry together in reality but on film it works on some level. I have developed an affinity for dark versus light settings and experimenting with different lighting techniques. Examples of this can been seen in Bird, Lady in the worm butt, Furry conjunctions, and Not only do slugs understand the value of humour..., where the main performance is lit a by a shard of natural light within a darkened environment. I would only ask for the viewer to take the time to experience it and not try to understand my work. There’s no conventional narrative. As you have remarked once, your performances are unplanned and unscripted: we have appreciated the way your approach to choreography conveys sense of freedom and reflects rigorous approach to the grammar of body language: how much importance does play improvisation in your process? I find a position of sameness with animals. I step into their world to explore it, not from a separate human position but from a position of animality. So improvisation plays a very important role in my work – the performance has to appear spontaneous and natural. I develop unplanned images and gestures working with my body and my movements; improvisation transcends conscious thought and movement. I discovered very early on that creating space for accidents to occur is fundamental to my practice – good mistakes can never be replicated no matter how often one tries. A non prescriptive or subconscious approach allows me to juxtapose and exaggerate similarities in ways that I couldn’t possibly plan to create paradoxical scenes. My video performances are an attempt to reconnect with animality and to experience life from an animal perspective; to communicate differently; to behave, move and even see differently. I imagine seeing myself from an animal’s Women Cinemakers
A still from perspective. My actions are unplanned and unanticipated, and take place within a framework or constructed context. There’s no conventional narrative – no logic. My movements appear slow and strangely disconnected from any human logic. I allow myself to be totally caught up in the process. Only subconscious movements occur, as if outside human time and space. Any structured thoughts become fewer. Sound plays an important role in your film and we have appreciated the way the throbbing visceral audio tapestry provides the footage of Not only do slugs understand the value of humour... with such an unsettling atmosphere: would you tell us how did you select the music for your film? And how do you see the relationship between sound and movement? The abstracted sounds of nature are interwoven with human sounds creating a disordered and nonsensical language. It was my intention for this kind of disordered language to mislead the audience into thinking that meaning resides somewhere in otherwise obscure fragments. For me, sound animates the visual – bringing the film to life. For Not only do slugs understand the value of humour... the loud and vibrating audio creates an other worldly dimension – an almost earth-trembling experience for the viewer as if being underground. I imagined a deep bass-like sound, as if emanating from the bowels of the earth, and that’s what I attempted to achieve. The slugs themselves had to be these huge creatures that are clearly living and breathing and in full action – creatures of the underground emerging with their own culture and their own lives, and it was the manipulation and layering of Women Cinemakers
Women Cinemakers sound that made the animal all the more present and confrontational. The use of sound is a relatively new focus to my work and is still in its infancy. Now I can see clearly the relationship between sound and movement in my films and how sound conveys another dimension and perspective. It was important to the work that the sounds evoking otherness were convincing and something the viewer could become lost in. As you have remarked in your artist's statement, your work is closely bound up in the notion of becoming-animal, with humans straying into the psychological territories of animals: how do you consider the relationship between humans and animals? In particular, do you think that the apparent dichotomy between humaness and the realm of animals is a product of cultural superstructures that affect our media driven societies? In this sense, does your artistic research respond to a particular cultural moment? My work is closely bound up in the notion of becoming-animal, with humans straying into the psychological territories of animals. Becoming-animal is above and below the threshold of perception and presents us with an alternative way of thinking about identity. Becoming animal naturally lends itself to experimentation – the concept is very fluid and elusive. Through research I discovered several philosophers talking about a need for human beings to reconnect in some way with their animality. We humans once experienced the world with all our senses; we relied on these animal senses for our very survival. It appears now that Western civilisation’s attitude to animals has created a gap or disconnection from nature and animals, lost in the process of its civilisation and socialisation. There are many different theories for the disconnection. This is now experienced
Women Cinemakers through the prism of technology rather than in the raw. On social media, for example, animal-related clips have become a phenomenon, with copious images posted and shared. My work is non polemic and doesn’t necessarily respond to a particular cultural movement. However, I find myself elevating the animal above the human. I’m very aware and sensitive to the destructive domination of human beings and their mismanagement of the planet. Non-human animals are the weakest and the most vulnerable among us. They can say nothing about the way they are nominated – so whether they are nominated as food or as entertainment, it matters a lot. In my view, art has a role. With its reach and influence on culture, it can provide an insight and a shift in culture. Today’s artists are well placed to critically engage with the representation of animals. Artists are using art to experience animality through ‘touching it with one’s mind’ as Deleuze and Guattari describe it. Their methodologies and strategies vary greatly; artists’ concerns are wide ranging, from the ecological to the philosophical, and from those engaging with the modification of animal bodies to those seeking to further the cause of animal rights. The subject of ‘animality’ is even becoming a concept in popular discourse. Discussions on its nature and significance are now taking place in academia as well as scientific disciplines. The stakes in representing animals can be very high. Who controls that representation? And to what ends will it be used? Some may argue that artists exploit animals in the name of art. Artists are in a position to influence perceptions and create new identities. This is important for many reasons: Firstly, for the animals themselves and their status in relation to the demands of human society; secondly, for people, in gaining a better understanding of our position within nature; and finally, it is
important for the future as arguments over climate change, hunting rights, fishing stocks and so on continue. We appreciate the way you combine realism with surreal qualities of the ambience, and we have appreciated the way such coherent combination addresses your audience to a multilayered experience. Art historial Ernst Gombrich once underlined the importance of providing a space for the viewer to project onto, so that they can actively participate in the creation of the illusion: how much important is for you to trigger the viewer's imagination in order to address them to elaborate personal associations? In particular, how open would you like your works to be understood? It is incredibly important to my work that I create space for the viewer to project onto or even to entice them into the work psychologically. I definitely don’t want to offer my own strict and dogmatic explanation of the genesis of the work. Its origins may sometimes be in specific circumstances or from a particular stance but during the making process the work becomes something other. I avoid giving any explanations as this is unhelpful to the audience because it then closes down other understandings of the work. It’s important that there’s a role for the viewer to interpret. With Slug culture, for example, we are forced to jump to our own conclusions and build what narrative we will from the scant concrete evidence we have. I created a montage of selffilmed footage featuring slugs in a lead role. The work is held together with sound, which includes ‘walked into a bar’ jokes by a stand-up comedian. I also believe that the approach to the animal need not be clear about its purposes – artists need space not to know what they’re doing. Artists watch the world in a particular way, with a seriousness and attentiveness. I did a solo show in October last year and was amazed by the varied interpretations of the work. It seemed people connected very easily with the animals and humour in the work, in many different ways and on very personal levels. Many artists express the ideas that they explore through representations of the body and by using their own bodies in their creative processes. German visual artist Gerhard Richter once underlined that "it is always only a matter of seeing: the physical act is unavoidable": how do you consider the relation between the abstract feature of the issues that you explore and the physical act of creating your artworks? It’s not so much abstract ideas but a daily, lived reality that somehow becomes abstract during the making process. I immerse myself in the natural world and the step from there to produce physical artwork doesn’t seem to me to be such as huge step. It’s a very slick transition between the two things. I’m capturing the essence of what is to be animal and the conjunctions with human behaviour. For example, the work with the cows came about from seeing cows in a field and wondering what would happen if they encountered something quintessentially human, from a human environment, such as an artwork. What I’m trying to do is render that in physical form. And with Cuckoos have very distinctive feet, on hearing a cuckoo in the woods, I wondered what it would be like to be one. I researched extensively and discovered their distinguishing features are their feet: two inner toes point forward and two outer toes point backwards. This manifests Women Cinemakers
itself in a performance piece where a woman, with very distinctive feet (red papier-mache shoes) sits high in the forest canopy watching and waiting. It’s the daily consumption of nature or the natural world – wherever I go I’m watching animals and nature. And sometimes all of that translates into an almost literal interpretation of what I’ve just seen. So I see a slug in the garden, for example, and I upscale it and translate or distort it into something of different portions. The abstract issues meld together and become the physical art. Before leaving this conversation we want to catch this occasion to ask you to express your view on the future of women in the contemporary art scene. For more than half a century women have been discouraged from producing something 'uncommon', however in the last decades women are finding their voices in art: how would you describe your personal experience as an unconventional artist? And what's your view on the future of women in this interdisciplinary field? As an ‘off the wall’ artist, as I’m sometimes referred to, I’d say I’m in a good place in terms of my practice. I sometimes get comments like ‘you’re so weird’ but that doesn’t concern me. In fact, I find it encouraging. I have no interest in conforming even though there’s an occasional underlying expectation to. Personally I get so much in terms of motivation from my research and making, and the subject matter is a driving force. I happily get lost in all this regularly. It’s great to find other people responding to my work with such curiosity and interest, and people tell me they find the work thoughtprovoking; it seems to create opinion, and that’s always great to hear as an artist. I think one has to be bold, unconventional and uncompromising to challenge our rational understanding. The frustrating aspect is the lack of opportunities available to exhibit. Gallery spaces, pop-up and ad hoc opportunities are incredibly limited. I really don’t understand why some galleries charge a fee for an artist to simply enter work. Surely that just closes down any avenues for less well-off artists – good artists with something to say. So collaborating with others is crucial, as is creating your own platforms and developing networks. For women, it’s so particularly important to keep pushing the boundaries, to keep asking important questions – like whose work gets seen in galleries and why. Keep creating opportunities to achieve an impact on artistic production and culture. It is a changing world now for women in art, compared to 50 years ago. Women were discriminated against for centuries, and that is deeply, structurally, embedded in our society in relation to political, social and economic circumstances. There are now some new opportunities available but there is a disproportionate representation of women in big national galleries and institutions, which have failed to recognise those female voices and those artists who have been working in very imaginative and innovative ways on the margins. Women in performance art, for example, blurs and acknowledges the problems in defining the boundaries between art and life. The vitality and strength of performance art, in particular, is its unruliness, whether completely improvisational or not; its deliberate transgressions of the art/life boundaries, its improvisational character, its slapdash messiness and its openness to the realms of myth and ritual, as well as the banal and everyday, means it is resistant to simple definitions. What’s distinctive about women’s art is their stories, their voices, and their perspectives on the world. As a woman, I Women Cinemakers
think video gave women a voice, because it wasn’t dominated by men. Women have much to say about their unique perspective and they have stories to tell. Working in an interdisclipinary way gives women the freedom to express and strive for personal agency, grapple with expectations, barriers and discrimination, and experiences of domesticity. We sometimes see in the media women encouraging girls and young women to be empowered, which is great and of course this must happen to address the gender and power imbalance. But I also feel that all women, regardless of age, should be encouraged to feel empowered – I think that’s really important. Thanks a lot for your time and for sharing your thoughts, Karen. Finally, would you like to tell us readers something about your future projects? How do you see your work evolving? I would like go on producing work with a slight jarring effect between what is presented and what is perceived, so that our rational understanding is challenged. I want it to transform us psychologically, in an unfamiliar way, with sound becoming increasingly key – I’d like to create immersive experiences to challenge perceptions of time and space, and alternative worlds. It’s very likely that animals will continue to be the performers – the inquisitive questioner – and the audience will be invited to become animal or something else. Women Cinemakers An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected]
Hello Rachelle and welcome to : we would like to introduce you to our readers with a couple of questions regarding your background. You have a solid formal training and after having earned your BA of B. A. of Studio Art from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, you An interview by Francis L. Quettier and Dora S. Tennant [email protected] nurtured your education with a M.F.A. of Digital+Media, that you received from the Rhode Island School of Design: how did these experiences inform your current practice? Holy Cross is a liberal arts school where I took courses in many different areas (biology, religious studies, philosophy, even American Sign Language) so that led me to a well-balanced and research-based practice. In some ways, my exploration of one media Rachelle Beaudoin Lives and works in Peterborough, NH USA I build and manipulate the landscape around me, performing a monotonous and undefined task before the revealing the purpose of the action. The final shot reveals the “birth” of the jade egg. This product, the jade egg, or yoni egg, was made famous after begin touted as a healing and muscle building product on Goop, Gwyneth Platrow’s lifestyle blog. As a woman in her late thirties, I became concerned about fertility and thought more about whether or not I wanted to conceive a child. This performance took place during this time of questioning and searching. It is a personal reflection and cultural criticism on the ways sexuality and health are marketed and sold to women the United States. Criticism of this produce was swift from gynecologists and those who tried it. The idea that this product, which implies there is something wrong with your vagina or that it is weak, is empowering is part of a broader issue with the way these products are sold to women. The egg and the form of the egg become fodder for my work as I use the object not as it was intended but as a metaphor for fertility and birth. Women Cinemakers meets
, 2017, performance for video, 4:04
, 2017, performance for video, 4:04
Women Cinemakers was limited in this setting, because we took fewer classes in one area than an art school, but I think in the end, that was a good thing for me because it allowed me to feel comfortable using what ever media is right for the project I am working on at the time. At RISD, I was fortunate to be in the early classes of the Digital+Media program and to study with Dr. Bill Seaman. The program was experimental and looked at all of the ways digital media was connected to and linked traditional media. Again, this allowed me to learn new skills in digital media but also work with whatever media worked best with my ideas. My classmates at RISD, Carmen Montoya, Christopher Robbins, John Ewing and Jeanne Jo provided the most valuable aspects of my education and still remain important peers and community members for me. At the time, a lot of people in the department were doing performance experiments during critiques, sometimes as protest, sometimes out of necessity, sometimes as humor, and being in that atmosphere led me to do some of my first performances. I started to research feminist performance and created an independent study with some peers and Prof. Catherine D’Ignazio to further understand and research this type of work while I was making it. Your practice is marked out with such captivating eclecticism and we have really appreciated the way your approach combines video, wearables, and performance: before starting to elaborate about your artistic production, we would invite to our readers to visit http://www.rachellebeaudoin.com in order to get a synoptic idea about your artistic production: in the
meanwhile, would you tell us what does address you to such captivating multidisciplinary approach? ? As I mentioned before, my background in liberal arts and in the Digital+Media program at RISD were influential in this style of working. I research and deconstruct the ways in which women are portrayed in popular culture and on the Internet. I contrast the natural world and the outdoors, to trends, themes and memes from the web, mashing up Kardashian culture with the rural, forested environment in which I live. Thighbrows, thigh gaps, and facial masks become fodder for my work. I use humor and sarcasm as an entry point into issues of gender, power and class in order to call out the invisible structures and sexism that pervades both the physical world and the online world. In order to do this, I use different approaches and media based on what I am currently investigating. One strategy of my work is to critique cultural products and gendered clothing by hacking, making my own versions, misusing or layering it. In 2014, I was awarded a Fulbright Core Scholar Grant as an artist-in-residence at quartier21 in Vienna, with the feminist hacker group Miss Baltazar’s Laboratory. There I created Positive Affirmation Underwear, altered underwear with custom electronics that played positive affirmations when the bra was clasped and a small soft switch on the underwear was pushed. In my wearable technology work, I create performance objects, garments that need to be activated by the wearer to complete the piece. Another strategy is through video performances, discussed in detail here and sometimes through animations. Women Cinemakers
, 2016, performance for video, 2:44
, 2016, performance for video, 2:44 014 performance for video, 4:19
Fitness, food, makeup and the Internet, all aspects of my daily life, are recurring themes in my work. Personal, sometimes awkward, yet open and inviting, the work emphasizes the physicality of the body, showing both vulnerability and strength, following in the tradition of feminist performance art. This work comes from a place of experience and honesty. Even as a feminist, I am susceptible to these trends, I purchase these products. I watch these videos. I want to expose this ambiguity from within. For this special edition of we have selected , an extremely interesting video performance that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article and that can be viewed at https://vimeo.com/227943027/31e239ef68. While walking our readers through the genesis of , would you tell us how did you develop the initial idea an why did you direct your artistic research on the concept of fertility? Often employing physical comedy, my videos document performances in which I explore the pressures and contradictions I face on a daily basis. I push concepts from web videos and advertising, specifically the language of advertising and the way things are marketed and sold to women, to the absurd so that the content becomes humorous and sometimes alarming. Women Cinemakers
In this untitled performance, I build and manipulate the landscape around me, performing a monotonous and undefined task before the revealing the purpose of the action. Assembling grasses, sticks, leaves, string, tarp and wire into a large circular nest form as the performance progresses; once the form is made, I quickly and without comment “birth” a jade egg into the nest. This product, the jade egg, or yoni egg, was made famous after being touted as a healing and muscle building product on *Goop* Gwyneth Paltrow’s lifestyle blog. One article on the site stated, “Jade eggs can help cultivate sexual energy, clear chi pathways in the body, intensify femininity, and invigorate our life force. To name a few!” Criticism of this product was swift from gynecologists and consumers who tried it. The idea that this product, which implies there is something wrong with your vagina or that it is weak, is empowering is part of a broader issue with the way beauty, self-help and personal care products are sold to women. As a woman in her mid-to-late thirties, I became concerned about fertility and thought more about whether or not I wanted to have a child. The first video performance of this piece took place at my home during this time of questioning and searching. The first live performance of this piece took place in Miami as a part of the NeXus Transcontinental Performance Art Platform at Edge Zones Art Gallery curated by Hector Canonge. During this live performance, I was visibly 20 weeks pregnant. In this performance, I constructed the nest for approximately 5 minutes before the egg was dropped. Because the audience was unaware that I was holding the egg in my vagina, the piece concluded with a moment of surprise. “Untitled” is a personal reflection and cultural criticism on the ways sexuality and health are marketed and sold to women the United States. The egg and the form of the egg become fodder for my work as I use the object not as it was intended but in a literal way to contemplate my own experiences with fertility and birth. Rich with use of metaphors to address the viewers to the concepts of fertility and birth, provide the spectatorship with such a multilayered experience: how important are metaphors in your practice? In particular, were you interested in providing your performance with an ? I do believe that art is essentially making metaphors and communicating via visual metaphors. In this piece, I am actually worried that this metaphor might be too literal or that if the viewer is unfamiliar with the product, the jade egg, that it would have less significance or meaning. Much of the performance work is built on metaphor and allegory. In those works, I typically do not speak and there is no narrative or narration so the action and the
, 2015 performance for video and found footage, 1:10
, 2015, performance for video, 2:21