Handle With Care

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2015
Buffalo, New York
Squeaky Wheel Film & Media Arts Center
Interactive Installation + Video Performances”I object, to being told what I am. I object, to being told how I feel. I object, to being told that nothing can be done, that it is what it is. I object, to being told to just accept it. I object, to being told to just move on. I object, to being told I am fragile. I, OBJECT.”
Much like the rest of this exhibition, the phrase I object holds multiple meanings. It is not simply an objection. It is not merely a protest – but a statement: I, object. At a time when online personas are intrinsically tied to our personal identity formation – I’ve begun to question the very relationship between the digital and corporeal body. As online platforms continue to encourage and at times almost beg for our participation – self-identity is deeply ingrained with imagery of the body; and as such flattened, embedded, and shared self-images. As Martin Jay reiterates in his book Downcast Eyes, “You are the only one who can never see yourself except as an image; you never see your eyes unless they are dulled by the gaze they rest upon the mirror or lens…. even and especially for your own body, you are condemned to the repertoire of its images.” This exhibition, however, does not only question mediated identity formation – it also questions the relationship between you and your cell phone. As digital technology is increasingly integrated into daily life – it’s important to stop and consider the relationships we foster with the devices that we intimately keep with us at all times; the very devices that act as a conduit for our consumption of digital information. For me, my cell phone maintains an almost parasitic contact with my body. If it is not in my hands, it is in my pants pocket, tightly pressed against me. Even at night, it lies next to me, as we both sleep and recharge – so to speak.Handle With Care provides a performative space for users to reflect on their intimate practices of imagery possession. There is a close connection we feel to the images captured by our personal electronic devices. We keep these images on hard drives for years – rarely ever going back to “re-live” moments seemingly important enough to eternally record. This form of digital hoarding is one of the elements at stake in this exhibition. Once archived onto the user’s personal device, these performances are accessible at any time, and in any space. In a sense, the performances are integrated into the external memory of the user for an infinite amount of time – permanently saved to the hard drive or cloud – unless purposefully erased from the memory.I, Object Video Link

And Now You Can Breathe

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AND NOW YOU CAN BREATHE
2014
SUNY UB 1st Year MFA Show, It’s Not Me, It’s You, Buffalo, NY
12:03 minute video performance

“Affectio is a mixture of two bodies, one body which is said to act on another, and the other receives the trace of the first.” – Gilles Deleuze.

If ever there was a time when an intimate relationship with a man felt right, I can’t remember it. Instead, my romantic relationships have left me feeling deeply disconnected from myself, casting my identity as a heterosexual interloper. Intimacy, it seems, eludes me. Yet I linger in the intimately banal moments of covert glances from strangers; empathetic feelings for characters on a screen; that drop in my stomach when I meet someone new. I have come to learn that it is not loss, but the residue of intimacy which haunts and contorts my memory of these experiences, as well as my sense of who I am, who I was and what I have become in its absence.

In the passage above, Deleuze describes what Spinoza terms “affectio,” or the trace one body leaves on another. This bodily residue, unconsciously left when two people interact, creates a tension of which neither body is fully cognizant. And Now You Can Breathe confronts this tension, which for me, lies in the binary structures of intimate heterosexual relationships. In these relationships, the emphasis on gender performativity puts pressure on both participants to act according to their assigned gender roles. Much like the characters in a play, this theatrical gender portrayal directs male/female intimate interactions.
It’s been ten years since I started dating men, and became an actress – a performer of femininity. However, each successive relationship has instilled in me the uneasy perception that I am failing my gender. When I look back at these relationships, I hardly recognize the person I would become once I integrated myself into my partner’s life. These traces of our time together trouble my notions of intimacy and belie the detachment I feel from myself, a visceral exertion that simultaneously leaves me desiring and resisting intimacy with men.

And Now You Can Breathe, video

For Everyone I Ever Trusted

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FOR EVERYONE I EVER TRUSTED
2010
White Box Gallery, Portland, Oregon
40 minute video, Collected paper ephemera, Hand bound books, Handcrafted pedestals

During the summer of 2009, I came across the term, “Examination of Conscience,” frequently used by the Catholic Church as a part of Confession. It is an act in which the person involved reflects on their past actions, words, thoughts..etc. And upon doing so, attempts to see themselves for who they are. I have always been interested in Confession, as a means of absolving one’s conscience. And as such, the human need for acceptance and forgiveness for past actions. Last summer, I read The Picture of Dorian Grey for the first time and picked up this quote which is exactly what appeals to me about Confession as an act, “I long to sit in the dim shadow of one of them and listen to men and women whispering through the worn grating the true stories of their lives.”

In a way, For Everyone I Ever Trusted lets the viewers do just that. The installation consists of two broadcast monitors playing videos simultaneously. One side has my friends and family saying “It’s ok,” over and over for 3 minutes. The other side is a video of me watching the other compilation. The two monitors are separated by a curtain/screen made from paper ephemera I collected since I was a child. Subtly to the side on one of the pedestals there are two small, hand bound red books. These books serve as my confession. Inside, one can find stories from my life, texts I have sent people, song lyrics I liked as a teenager, dreams I once wrote down and a list of all the boys I have ever kissed. But in order to make these confessions still a bit of a secret, I overlapped the pages, backward and forward. The end product is a mash up of words printed on a fibrous, transparent paper resembling the texture of fingerprints. It is a very private object half diary, half bible it reveals everything there is to know about me.

Mingqi

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MINGQI
2009
White Box Gallery, Portland, Oregon
Curated by John Jay

In the summer of 2009 I was asked to participate in the upcoming White Box Gallery Grand Opening exhibit, Inspiration China. Each artist was asked to create a piece of art inspired by an assigned Chinese artifact from the Portland Art Museum’s collection. I was given a mingqi, an item that was placed in the tombs of the dead to protect them and in many cases help them in the spirit world. During the time these items were used in China, the Chinese believed that there were two parts to the soul; the Po and the Hun. One of which leaves the body after death and other of which stays.

At the time Mingqi was being conceived, I was reading alot about torture and the kinds of things people do to each other to discover the truth. I really became interested in the idea of using self torture as a means of soul purification. So I started a faux company called Mingqi and branded it, in many ways, as a mix between a new age religion and a product sold on an infomercial. The clean graphics and bold color of the logo hid what was in reality a very dark business model.

The final product came to the consumer in the form of two white packets, labeled The Po and The Hun. With vinyl stickers attached to the front, the packets came complete with instructions, a CD, a DVD, a sleep mask and ear plugs.

Act of Contrition

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ACT OF CONTRITION
2009
Siena, Italy
Performance, filmed
Video: 3 minutes 37 seconds

The Act of Contrition is a site specific performance piece from the summer of 2009. Performed at the Duomo in Siena, Italy, the piece focused on guilt. Upon coming back to Italy, for the second time, I was faced once again with the enormity of the Catholic cathedrals. And yet every time I went inside one of those beautiful buildings, I was struck by the weight of Catholic guilt in the form of confessional booths. The idea of confessing one’s sins as a way to purify yourself really stayed with me. Not only is it a deeply personal act, it is also very inwardly reflective. With this in the back of my mind, I sat down and wrote down 20 things I felt guilty about. Being raised, outside of religion, this was quite the task for me. Then one night at around midnight I took 3 men, dressed in all black, to project my guilts on the front of the Duomo, while I kneeled at it’s doors praying for forgiveness. They formed a triangle around me, loosely representing the father, the son and the holy ghost. The performance lasted just under 4 minutes and amongst the silence of Siena the experience was deeply moving. Not wanting a big audience, for a piece that was so personal the limited attendance actually mimicked the privacy of a confessional booth.

The prayer that I repeated during the performance is as follows:

O my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended You and I detest all my sins, because I fear the loss of heaven and the pains of hell, but most of all because they offend You, my God, who are all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve, with the help of Your grace, to confess my sins, to do penance and to amend my life. Amen.

Examination of Conscience

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EXAMINATION OF CONSCIENCE
2009
Video Performances

The work, Examination of Conscience, was conceived in the fall of 2009. After moving to Portland, Oregon I came across a few old diaries I had kept in high school. Upon reading these once important moments, I began to consider them in the spectrum of my life. While they were long past and forgotten, reading through my intimate thoughts, made me quite uncomfortable. My first instinct was to burn them, my second, to read them in front of a camera. These feelings that were only ever confided to a pen and paper, needed to be verbally spoken and shared. Sitting in my empty living room on my golden yellow chair, I began performing for an unknown audience. Deeply inspired by story telling and the act of confessing in church, I saw these performances as a way to reconstruct my past. Having never mastered a functional relationship, I wondered if the consolation I was looking for might be found in these forgotten diaries.

The video series is compiled of 60 videos that can all be found on Vimeo. It also took the form of a live performance for the end of term BFA reviews in the fall of 2009. In the performance I read from several diary entries while sitting on the same yellow couch that was in my apartment. The performance was also accompanied by a letterpressed confession. In order to express my anxiety of doing my first live performance, something I related to being in your first relationship.

Watch all 60 videos at https://vimeo.com/user2062831/videos