what's new, ice queen?
I've been lax with my posting here for oh, maybe the last two years or so, but I'm going to stop. I mean, start.
Posting. Soon. Pretty things.
But in the meantime, here's something I've been working on lately: blocks of coloured ice (dyed with paint, blood, coffee, tea, juice, whatever I have on hand) hung from the ceiling, embedded with associational objects (medical supplies, medical images and coins, feathers, leaves) and left to melt, dripping their dye and objects into receptacles surrounded by white fabric. It's all a surprise, in that the objects within the ice become exposed through its each diminishing layer, and the stain patterns on the white fabric are created slowly, through melting and dripping -- a process both messy and inevitable, and one I cannot control.
They're about the body and narrative and health and phenomenological loneliness. They take a helluva long time to make, are very heavy, and extremely messy. They occupy my freezer, thereby forcing me to eat left-overs I forgot I ever had('nt eaten). They are pretty when the light shines through them and they leave nothing remaining at the end. They are not for sale (they are not the selling kind).
Here's the first one, an installation at studio béluga. The show was called 'as in a hollow tree' and was part of nestling, an event series we put on, working with issues and ideas about nests, family and home. This particular block of ice is a contemporary re-telling of the Greek story of Alcestis, Queen of Pharae, who willingly died for her husband. It's heavy...
But I manage to install it without dirtying my dress.
That will come later.
It drips while other parts of the as-yet-uninstalled installation sit tight in the background:
...It has some seriously creepy things hidden inside it:
And this is the receptacle the ice drips/objects fall into. An established video art critic came by and told me that she found it really disturbing, that it was, to her 'completely the abject'. Thanks! I said, meant.
The second was for The Happiness Project, a multi-media site installation brought together as part of Pop Montreal. Based on Charles Spearin's album of the same name, which is actually a wonderful project in which he interviewed his neighbours about what happiness meant to them, and made their speech into heart-breaking-warming-but-still-very-listenable songs. http://www.myspace.com/charlesspearin. The challenge was to take one of his musical pieces and translate it into something visual, in a room in an apartment. The song I got (and love) is called 'Vanessa' and is the story of a young deaf woman's experience of acquiring a cochlear implant through an invasive surgery. It allows her to hear for the first time.
Here are some guests, looking suspicious:
I made three blocks of ice every night for 4 nights, installing them each day. This is one of the babies (the headband-like image is an antique hearing device):
They drip into receptacles like this. Since the blocks are white, the stones are there to give some contrast:
This is light, shining throught it. The piece really changed with the sunlight throughout the day and into the night:
And here's the most recent. It's based on the journals of Emily Carr, Canadian eccentric, artist and writer extraordinaire. I've been reading 'Hundreds and Thousands', her diary from some of her most productive years. For an ornery, celibate loner, she certainly has a sensual bent to her writing. She never stops talking about nature.
This particular ice-block is not the prettiest of them all, but then, neither was she. She was earthy. This is pretty earthy. It has leaves. The striation along the side (below) is a result of my method of freezing each piece layer by layer, so that I can embed the objects and lots of string to carry its weight:
This is Emily Carr's receptacle. After one day of exhibiting, you can see the discolouration around the basin -- beginnings of a very beautiful pattern made by the brown water drips that I now have hanging on my wall:
Posting. Soon. Pretty things.
But in the meantime, here's something I've been working on lately: blocks of coloured ice (dyed with paint, blood, coffee, tea, juice, whatever I have on hand) hung from the ceiling, embedded with associational objects (medical supplies, medical images and coins, feathers, leaves) and left to melt, dripping their dye and objects into receptacles surrounded by white fabric. It's all a surprise, in that the objects within the ice become exposed through its each diminishing layer, and the stain patterns on the white fabric are created slowly, through melting and dripping -- a process both messy and inevitable, and one I cannot control.
They're about the body and narrative and health and phenomenological loneliness. They take a helluva long time to make, are very heavy, and extremely messy. They occupy my freezer, thereby forcing me to eat left-overs I forgot I ever had('nt eaten). They are pretty when the light shines through them and they leave nothing remaining at the end. They are not for sale (they are not the selling kind).
Here's the first one, an installation at studio béluga. The show was called 'as in a hollow tree' and was part of nestling, an event series we put on, working with issues and ideas about nests, family and home. This particular block of ice is a contemporary re-telling of the Greek story of Alcestis, Queen of Pharae, who willingly died for her husband. It's heavy...
But I manage to install it without dirtying my dress.
That will come later.
It drips while other parts of the as-yet-uninstalled installation sit tight in the background:
...It has some seriously creepy things hidden inside it:
And this is the receptacle the ice drips/objects fall into. An established video art critic came by and told me that she found it really disturbing, that it was, to her 'completely the abject'. Thanks! I said, meant.
The second was for The Happiness Project, a multi-media site installation brought together as part of Pop Montreal. Based on Charles Spearin's album of the same name, which is actually a wonderful project in which he interviewed his neighbours about what happiness meant to them, and made their speech into heart-breaking-warming-but-still-very-listenable songs. http://www.myspace.com/charlesspearin. The challenge was to take one of his musical pieces and translate it into something visual, in a room in an apartment. The song I got (and love) is called 'Vanessa' and is the story of a young deaf woman's experience of acquiring a cochlear implant through an invasive surgery. It allows her to hear for the first time.
Here are some guests, looking suspicious:
I made three blocks of ice every night for 4 nights, installing them each day. This is one of the babies (the headband-like image is an antique hearing device):
They drip into receptacles like this. Since the blocks are white, the stones are there to give some contrast:
This is light, shining throught it. The piece really changed with the sunlight throughout the day and into the night:
And here's the most recent. It's based on the journals of Emily Carr, Canadian eccentric, artist and writer extraordinaire. I've been reading 'Hundreds and Thousands', her diary from some of her most productive years. For an ornery, celibate loner, she certainly has a sensual bent to her writing. She never stops talking about nature.
This particular ice-block is not the prettiest of them all, but then, neither was she. She was earthy. This is pretty earthy. It has leaves. The striation along the side (below) is a result of my method of freezing each piece layer by layer, so that I can embed the objects and lots of string to carry its weight:
This is Emily Carr's receptacle. After one day of exhibiting, you can see the discolouration around the basin -- beginnings of a very beautiful pattern made by the brown water drips that I now have hanging on my wall:
posted by Svea Vikander at 9:44 PM
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