by Heather Bennett 2008 c.
With a nod to Warhol’s, 1964 opus, “Empire”, this trilogy of videos resists any typical temporal,
action-based narrative, and yet simultaneously suggests it. Each piece centers around a lone
woman, all of whom almost slyly encompass a
panoply of reflecting fictions. The amalgamated ‘characters’ take substance from childhood
fairytales, contemporary fashion, female genre
roles and a healthy dose of nostalgia and somehow coalesce into a peaceful, almost quieting image.
The enmeshing of an anti-narrative and obvious reference to the bold fiction of children’s fairytales complicate the calm hold of these images with
humor; slithering alloys placing ironies. While we
can see no real action over the duration of these works, at the intersection of cliché, there is a poignancy, a piquancy. Slight movements are not deliberations but more akin to a misty dream, an
action of the unconscious; slow, flowing, even meandering and pointless but undeniably pertinent
as iconic and soulful. These are portraits of
control, of mastery. Almost in subterfuge, there is
a complexity, a riot, a life replete with pressure, valuation, desire, memory, association, limitation
and possibility, bubbling under the surface of a lullaby. Original soundtracks of tonal washes and subtle, circular, harmonies paint clues to the welled chaos of our valiant mistresses. Impregnated with emotion, these imperial sometimes haunting tracks illuminate and obfuscate their tenants, giving rise to their essential contradiction. We see traps of assumption escaped with grace. The prisons
laying in wait within contemporary society,
especially in a female body, are refracted through distorted prisms of past and present associations which affect our reality sometimes with serendipity,
as well as, inappropriateness.
“Holly Holy” is a collision of Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White and a bit of Eve, bathed in red velvet
and monastically reading Faulkner. “Locks &
Hocks” conflates Goldilocks and a restrained 50’s housewife, entombed in a sun-drenched, yellow kitchen listlessly stirring a pot of beans and ham hocks. And “Babe” collapses male and female
with a school girl, Paul Bunyan combo of metamorphosed blue plaid where our heroine dully wields a two-sides axe, knocking dirt from her
boots, while swathed in one of the most sexualized articles of clothing in recent history. The resulting unions blend our knowns, alarm us with their misplaced intimacies and create an inextricably raveled whole which humbly asks us to believe in something we are not quite sure we understand.
Music by Joe Raglani
Babe
Here is a certain Babe comprised of a bit of him and her. A cool, indigo vision, she is an ironic compound; her plaid doubling for Paul Bunyan’s mammoth mythical flannel and a schoolgirl’s required skirts. She could be in the daily circular encouraging us to buy a certain skin cream or shampoo except for the fact that she is fitted to chop down the tree on which she leans. She is calm and collected beneath the weight of implications her fusion lends, nonchalantly, methodically, knocking dirt off her boots with a pristine double-edged axe, giving us no clue as to whether she has spent the day lumbering or in mischief, hidden within a fringe of woods surrounding a playground and brandishing this inappropriate toy. Nonplussed, she holds the extremes of sexual stereotyping, the immensity of masculinity and a staple of the fantasy female.
The brief appearance of a Bowie-eyed dog, which she holds on a loose leash, openly embodies the original legend’s ‘Babe’; while also her namesake. Yet his presence seems only a reflection of her representation and benign power; he is not quite a possession and not quite a concern. Her course, or rather lack thereof, is unaffected by this creature’s departure. She is steady, solid, sexual, sexed-up, pure, and yet in control, invoking, alternately, simultaneously, the assumed characteristics of her counterparts. She stares at us squarely as leaves suddenly, glowingly, fall around her in a murmur. And somehow she rings sound and absolute, above, as well as, the definition of her telling contractions, giving Orlando a bit of a run for his/her money.
Holly Holy
Scarlet and sacred, inviolability bathed in red velvet. Our figure comes to us in a sultry hush. She is Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood and a bit of Eve quietly reading Light In August, solo. And yet, she resembles an advertisement, maybe for perfume or liqueur, embodying a language with which we are acutely familiar. She holds all of these obvious fictions, graphic genres and temporal collisions with a subdued intensity. Her multifaceted combinations making her anything but fragmented. On the contrary, she is insular. The sum of herself in the midst of caricature. The filter through which her moments are seen gently cascades over what could be chaos, humming above a riot. Her lack of action, the circularity of her slight, steady, pitchless movement, trick us with an unbroken line, a lack of story; we almost miss contemplation and intent.
Her book reaffirms her presence. And she reflects its characters, trapped in a prison borne from her expected role, from the assumptions draped upon her. However, she seems to resist their inevitability. Somehow her portrait reflects a strength of which she directs; in the face of her wild conjunction of realities, she finds a unity, an order. She seems to be telling us what Faulkner’s Reverend Gail Hightower could never allow himself. What is holy?, we ask in a crimson flush. Gently, soothingly, she says, ‘we are’.
Locks & Hocks
It is a hard fortune, when surrounded by a halo of light, to stir a pot with so much melancholia. Tossing back some golden locks, our mirthless housewife prepares a meal of beans and ham hocks, three place settings in waiting, maybe a make-up dinner for ruined porridge or to be served on a T.V. tray after a dry martini. Ablaze in a sunny 50’s party dress and gold, open-toe pumps, we expect a bottle of lemon fresh Joy held close to a sparkling smile. A window sheathed in lace curtains glows biblically behind our heroine as it reaches to illuminate her. But her shine is a bit low luster, enveloping a trapped sadness along with ludicrousness. And yet, however lulled or weighed down by the repercussions of her description, we still see a ray of will. She cuts through her fictions with possession, leaving the sunbeam-drenched stereotypes to act on us like some kind of clumsy opiate.
She has no story but contains our own, silently. Her presence links to our present and all through which it is constantly diffused. She maintains a concentrated command, anything but watered down by her visual contradictions and cultural responsibilities. Her image morphs into a clash of opposing impulses, hammered with memory, all under a veil of tranquility. Gazing out the window, stirring, she seems to be waiting for no one.
