bctn - MAIDENS OF THE COSMIC BODY RUNNING

MAIDENS OF THE COSMIC BODY RUNNING

selection FOTOGENIA international film festival 2023, Mexico City

BETTER CLOSE THAN NEVER

A project imagining the romance of the river on a full-moon night.
This 2023 film is an outgrowth of a 2022 residency conducted at the Summit and 21C Hotels as part of the FotoFocus Biennial.

Better Close Than Never interrogates our relationship with the natural world, onto which we project our fears and desires.

Hotels are powerful sites for the Maidens’ work, often situated near places of natural beauty, but providing a clean, safe ‘home base’ from which one can fantasize about the idealized natural world ‘just over there’. On full moon occurrences, the Maidens occupied rooms in the Summit and 21C hotels, making them into theaters of irrational devotion. There, they created work that imagined gravitational lunar seduction and lush energy of the waters.

The 2022 residency culminated as an exhibition at the Summit gallery, which included projected video, imagery, interactive elements and the sculptural objects/costumes included in the videos. At times, the viewer was incorporated as a subtle performative element, co-creating a tableau of viewing and being viewed.

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Watch the long, deep cut video here

FROM THE RESIDENCY

GAZER

Rings constructed from concentrated moon milk are used both as
finger decor and as viewfinders. Gaze at objects of desire by holding one of them up to your eye, and experience a heightened sense of desire, romance and intimacy. Try it- it works! It's just handy to keep on your finger.

A MAIDEN IS DRAWN TO THE CONFLUENCE
and therefore arises a custom cocktail from ingredients found on a full moon night

MINGLE
the essence of odors are "con-flowed" into a lo-friction perfume,
perfect for wearing while viewing this action.

UNRAFTED
As maidens imagine stones tumbled and washed up onto the nocturnal riverside, their faces are lovingly burnished by moonlight until they rest as pure platonic form.

LANDLESS
Found at the confluence, these pieces sing of their picturesque embrace with the moon, full and pulling, warping the water and everything in it.

FLOH
When this garment (vehicle) is worn, the romance of the moon on the river will engulf the cooperating body and allow it to feel a sensation of weightless fluidity.

Scenic Overlook
a projection onto a large slumped screen. For this piece, the Maidens engaged the velvet voice of Bill Myers, final announcer for the hypnotic radio show Moon River, produced in Cincinnati from 1930-1970.

Stimularities
a video created for the residency, documenting the Maidens' play in room 534 as a primary site for romantic fantasies about the confluence.

STILL LIFE
a collection of pre-membered souvenirs from the confluence

BETTER CLOSEST
This video was projected onto the corner of the Summit Hotel gallery that sat the closest to the convergence of the Little Miami and Ohio rivers. The original version was silent and was not listed in the gallery guide. It was meant to simply be a subtly vibrating corner in the space.

IMAGES, OBJECTS

Fotomassage- You With Staff photo and acrylic paint on german etch paper 33" x 44"

Fotomassage- Witnesses photo and acrylic paint on german etch paper 33" x 41"

Fotomassage- The Book in Which photo and acrylic paint on german etch paper 33" x 52"

Fotomassage- Converge photo and acrylic paint on german etch paper 33" x 60"

Gazarch photo on german etch paper 28" x 37"

Reflaxions-upperhand photo on german etch paper 18" x 24"

Reflaxions-middleground photo on german etch paper 18" x 24"

Reflaxions-lowerlevel photo on german etch paper 19" x 18"

Telescopic Mast photo on german etch paper 24" x 15"