Stills from a 4-channel video in post-production. Feet were dragging on this one, but a corner was turned today and I got excited again. Something about the colour.
This was shot in 2008 at the Headlands Center for the Arts in California.
Freddy, played by Joe McKay
Jason, played by Pavel Kruk
Leatherface, played by Beckley Roberts
Michael, played by Reid Johnston
Installation images: exhibition at Peter Fingesten Gallery, Pace University, NYC.
Krampus, the Austrian Christmas boogieman (via NPR), beware all naughty kiddos.
Note to self: plan Graz vacation next Winter!
I’ve been working on a new web project called Horror Stories with Julie Gill, a programmer who is also a ballet dancer. Here’s a sneak peek at the visuals. I am hoping to launch it soon.
I’ve been working on a new video, Hunger – a series of three staring contests with TV and film vampires. I inserted myself digitally into scenes from Twilight (New Moon), True Blood, and Being Human. As the (replaced) ingénue hopeful of shared immortality, I am locked in endless staring contests with Edward, Bill, and Mitchell – the leading male vampires from these series who share brooding good looks, apparent youth, advanced vampire years, immortality’s curse, abstinence from blood and in some cases sex, and an ability to pass as mortal. These are the new breed vampires of our dreams – insatiable, beautiful, charming, yet dangerous. Separate hungers unite them with their mortal prey. Time is suspended in the staring contests which no one wins and no one loses. In installation three larger than life projections play simultaneously, forcing the viewer to either shift their gaze between screens constantly in order to catch a blink; or to simply indulge in an infinite loop.
Hunger is a commission of Revised Projects and the New Forms Media Society for the Electric Speed project series, curated by Kate Armstrong and Malcolm Levy. We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts which last year invested $11.8 million in media arts throughout Canada.
Better Off Dead is a new scholarly book edited by Sarah Juliet Lauro and Deborah Christie (Fordham Press). It features a chapter titled Zombies Invade Performance Art…and Your Neighbourhood, featuring Thea Munster’s Toronto Zombie Walks and my own artworks. Cover art and other images from my recent work. Well written and researched, the book is not another campy zombie book; this one considers the post-human archetype from some surprising angles.
Images and interview segments, of my work and others’ in article Beyond Art Galleries by Claire Lieberman, Art Experience NYC magazine (Fall 2011). Read the article online, pp 16 – 33
Here is a catalogue of my recent horror-related artworks which can be downloaded or viewed online as a pdf.
Text by Virginia Spivey. 16 pages, 3.6 MB
Two recent TV series which, despite my low expectations, I have been watching, for “research purposes” are The Walking Dead and Being Human (UK version only).
The Walking Dead, on AMC, is based on a weekly comic series begun in 2003. It’s a zombie apocalypse tale set in the American South (Georgia), and better than a lot of zombie movies. The worst part is the first season had only 6 episodes and it’s been off now for many months. It shares a problem with a lot of high production TV: namely, suspense fades fast. I already forgot the characters’ names. I may have missed the undead for a while, but I got over it.
Being Human, decidedly more light-hearted, has a ridiculous premise: a vampire, a werewolf and a ghost shack up and try to pass as human in a working class Bristol neighbourhood. As embarrassing as this may sound, it is both funny and dramatic. Refreshingly, Mitchell the vampire, despite being abstinent and devastatingly handsome like his fellow male vampire stars Bill (True Blood) and Edward (Twilight) which I’ve mentioned before here and here, has no human ingénue to protect with his powers, and torture with his immortality. The worst thing about this series is the terrible and completely charmless American remake, hot on its heels and eager to capitalize on its success.
Vampire Diaries set in small town Virginia and currently in it’s second season on CW, is equally charmless. No amount of beautiful pouts can drag the teenaged characters from their dull lines and generic prettiness, and I lost interest long before the first diary entry (yes, the vampire does keep a diary, as does his human ingénue love interest).