Vampire Hunt
2-channel video, 2007
The vampire, although undead, lives a rich immortal life, and is cloaked in a mythology that is simultaneously erotic, intriguing, and infinitely mysterious. Unlike the zombie, the vampire is an elegant, clever, and exotic creature worthy of admiration who hunts by night, draining victims of life and blood. In possession of a subconscious, a vampire may experience guilt or remorse, cursing his or her existence yet unable to end it.
Vampire Hunting is a two-channel video in which projections on two
opposing walls position the viewer in the center of a visual loop, wherein
a hungry vampire endlessly pursues a heroine.* On screen, I “play”
both roles. The video tracks are the same length. The vampire,
prepared with professional make-up and seen from the front stalks its prey, our heroine,
who has already received a fang bite.
The heroine slips through the forest hiding and glancing over her shoulder, ever
aware of the imminent danger as the camera follows her. Her predator has already been
wounded by a stake to the heart. In the scenarios, filmed in a pine forest in Southern Wisconsin,
it is obvious that vampire and heroine are somehow the same, referencing
the genre’s implied life-cycle where the living become the undead and the
undead survive only by drinking from the living. Chronological time is confused, the
narrative is non-linear. The vampire is hunting, and also being hunted. The tracks are
projected simultaneously and the sequences looped continuously.
Locating the viewers physically between the two roles positions them as both the pursued just out of reach of danger, and the pursuer hungering for its prey.
~steadicam, Beckley Roberts
*The installation is alternately exhibited as two
screens side by side for comparative viewing.
