Imaginary
Single-channel videos / Archival Pigment Prints. 2016
With movement and choreography by Lida Winfield.
Imaginary locates the moving body as an amorphous intrusion on the landscape. Like a mold or parasite that is both naturally occurring but also offensive, the human body grows and spreads itself over a symbolically intact environment. In these videos, the human form, made abstract and out-of-place by jerky movement and alien apparel moves in and out of unification with and dislocation from its surroundings, an expression of our own imaginary projection of mind out into the world. These expressions are at once joyful, dark, and ultimately impotent.
Responding to seasonal changes within both domesticated and untouched natural settings in the woods of Vermont, each video uses color as a prompt, exploring divergent psychological moods and encounters with the landscape. Viewed also as large-scale photographic prints, the composition of the landscape is arrested and the movement of the body is frozen, slowing down the viewer’s ability to be absorbed in place.