Featuring new work from Columbia College Interdisciplinary Arts Graduate students Shay Atkinson, Karen Louis and Annie Perry, "The New Flesh" is a group show derived from the exploration of the Horror genre in cinema and literature, under the mentorship of Joan Dickinson and Matthew Owens. This show was featured at The Finch Gallery at 2747 W. Armitage, Chicago, IL on May 30th, 2008. The images are of the installation and femme, both before and after the performance. More images of the actual performance will come, as they are sent to me!!!
The components are as follows:
Statement:
Femme Fatale: a visitation
The femme fatale is an archetype commonly used in horror. She’s so much fun, and oddly trusted by those she leads into the horrific abyss of idolatry, ritual, sacrifice and damnation. In a cinematic atmosphere, she is a sexy villain: coy, serpentine, sardonic, and always coining the best lines and costumes. There is no limit to her potential for orchestrating terror and camp, at an equal rate. The human condition bores her to tears at times, amuses and irritates at others. After all, the human condition is the weakness on which she proudly preys.
In literature, she is more mysterious. Her darkness is her condition. Rather than a weakness, it is a given circumstance. She is demonized as a seductress, vampire, succubus, witch, and driven only by her need to seduce, possess and offer victims to her higher power, which does not belong to her, leaving her only option to seek her next victim as an obsessive link in a never-ending chain of wicked spinsterdom. She is indifferent, irresponsible and detached.
Neither of these depictions dare delve into the creation of the Femme Fatale. She is a character that other characters deal with, or die from. She has no real sense of identity. She is one-sided.
Tonight, I have invited you into a space that is rarely seen-her own. Explore her personal space, her rituals, her soundtrack, and her layers.
Have fun.
Karen Louis
Photo montages: 2 posted on the wall, one seperated and lined with corkboard, cut to fit together and seperate, as a puzzle/coasters. Each individual image is a close up on various angles of portions of my face or physical scars, brought together to build the same shapes with different features, and a few inside jokes, of course
Single Photos:All are variations of the same "headshot", with captions("bitch") or borders(generic baby shower motif), or color play
Decanters:2-one with wine, with "bitch" headshot as cork, the other with wax fingertip castings, traditional cork, dipped in wax
Glasses: one short(for wine-she drinks, wouldn't you?!?!), the other a shot glass full of wax fingertip casings
Memory Box:Painted in Acrylic, poloroid self portait affixed to the inside.
Novelty"Morning After Mint" box
The underside of the frame reads:
Rebuild
Regroup
Revolt
Rescind
Recant
Reassign
Realize
Remember
The topside of the bottom base reads:
I love you
I'm proud of you
Pitchers:2-one glass, filled with water, the other dark blue ceramic, filled with berries and beets, mashed
small wire-framed oval mirrors:6-five white, one black
Paintings:2-both acrylic on canvas-"faceless"9"x12", "Icon"10"x20"
Pathway:Butcher paper, spray paint, photos of facial portions, slate painted paving stones
Plastic serving trays:2
Rocking chair
Wooden writing box
Coat tree
Small table
Deck of cards
"dream machine" CD player
Soundtrack play list:
1)The Modern Things-Bjork
2)Hot as Ice-Britney Spears
3)Kinda I want to-Nine Inch Nails
4)Very Ape-Nirvana
5)I'm Not Your Stepping Stone-Monkees
6)Rise Above-Black Flag
7)I've Just Seen a Face-the Beatles
8)The Mercy Seat-Nick Cave& the Bad Seeds
9)At the Chime of a City Clock-Nick Drake
10)Heart Shaped Box-Nirvana
11)Bela Lugosi's Dead-Bauhaus
12)Dancing Barefoot-Patti Smith
13)Cuddly Toy-the Monkees
14)Headphones-Bjork
Spoken text:(note"-text-" is also written on paving stones, but not necessarily discernable)
She stands above like a convert, filling in the shape of memory
while I shove mine under my fingernails as proof
-identification-
-the blueprint of blame-
in a frame of flesh and nail
in a world of parking lot buildings
Hero Spaghetti
Viva Pizza
and passers-by clinging to each other for guidance
as they move through the celebrated
-city of grit-
filling in and blocking out the criminalized clues
as they build up before us in towers and turns
movement and metal
-contorting-
begging for color
screaming for serenity
through breaths of whiskey and exhaust
cleansing the palettes of those of us
-looking to be lost-
Every Inch a lady
a professor of nature
poised, intent,bemused
I build my own frames
to settle with the ones that stand before me
as the architecture of perspective
Beneath the empty flagpole of the World
and that wrinkle in my forehead that keeps my raising eyebrows
from flying off my face.
Once hopeful to the point of hopeless
now hopeless to the point of hopeful,
I stand atop my tower of soapboxes
like a convert
Shrugging my shoulders and twisting my face
to recognize the strength of people who have been traind to feed an addiction
Which could be religion
Which could be psychology
Which could be philanthropy
Which Could be alchemy
Which could be Law and Order
Lenny Briscoe and his brimstone
approaching in quips and smirks
professing his demons
enacting the stories not based on actual events
that I recognize from the headlines I keep on as my background noise
as I build and release my view
beneath the empty flagpole of the World
and below the marqee
and that windowsill between the two
where I've been pushing my DNA under my fingernails as proof
-identification-
and to keep my demons my own
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If you've gotten this far and are still reading, I should give you something more interesting to play with. You deserve it!!! The idea behind this whole piece was to take an archetype, and give it a terribly human atmosphere. I chose the femme, really, because I'm a woman, and women have two options in this genre:victim or vixen.There is the heroine, but she tends to be more of a "lucky victim," most of the time, and that was boring to me. I wanted to play with demons. Walking into the space, it is structured as a living space-at first glance, it seems typical, but as you get in closer, the mundane becomes more complicated and uncomfortable. The movement of the character throughout the space is the same. She sits in her rocking chair, watching intently and closely as each person enters the room. She plays a skewed game of solitaire. She watches.She walks through the room, invading personal space, interacting, pouring water into the serving tray at one end of the path, and the beet-berry mix into the serving tray at the other end, in ritual. As the night continues, she begins to peel off her skin-literally, while watching and staring, saying little.
When the text begins, it is the end of her night-the final ritual. She removes her costume throughout, then her wig, hanging them on the coat rack. When she is is in her slip, she steps into berry-beet gore, and walks down the path. The final lines of text coincide with the literal ripping off of her face. Time to go to bed. Sleep well.
