Music of Desire
2017, 08:03, found 16mm film to video using analog video synthesizers, sound
When intimacy couples with dysfunction; feel the sensation of becoming suspended between pleasure and a reverse soundtrack of desire. Produced through a media art residency at Signal Culture using real-time analog video processing tools and found media.
Sexual dysfunction and disruptions to pleasure are common symptoms of trauma. High and low-level therapies can include music and body work. I converted the filmic body into a controlling signal, which was then applied back onto itself. The process a model of trauma; the material sources, point to the need for therapy, clinical and pop.
Screening History:
2023 Bodies for Power and Strength media performance by Kristin Reeves, invited solo/feature-length program presented by Cinema Project, at Pacific Northwest College of Art, Willamette University, Portland OR
2023 Bodies for Power and Strength media performance by Kristin Reeves, invited solo/feature-length program presented by Shapeshifters Cinema at Mosswood Chapel, Oakland, CA
2021 Non-Event TV, The 24 Hour Non-Event Fundraiser, invited, curated by Wenhua Shi, Boston, MA, virtual.
2020 7th Edition Cine Oculto, curated by Federico Goldemberg and Victoria Fulloni, invited international, live stream due to Covid-19, Buenos Aires, Argentina
2019 Lost and Found in Late Capitalism, Pleasure Dome, Toronto, Canada
2019 FLEX ’19, Tampa, FL
2019 Revolutions per Minute Film Festival, UMass-Boston, Boston, MA
2018 Cinema Expanded Hopkins Hall Gallery, The Ohio State University, Columbus, OH
2018 56th Ann Arbor Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, internationally adjudicated, Ann Arbor, MI
2017 Class Order Family Tribe, 20th Annual Antimatter [Media Art] Festival, Deluge Contemporary Art, Victoria, internationally adjudicated, BC, Canada
2017 Transient Visions: Festival of the Moving Image, internationally adjudicated, Johnson City, NY
2017 San Diego Underground Film Festival, internationally adjudicated, San Diego, CA
2017 Revelation Perth International Film Festival, internationally adjudicated, Perth, Australia
2017 Milwaukee Underground Film Festival, internationally adjudicated, Milwaukee, WI
2017 Athens International Film Festival, internationally adjudicated, Athens, OH
2017 AVIFF Cannes Art Film Festival, internationally adjudicated, Cannes, France
2017 Indie Grits Film Festival, nationally adjudicated, Columbia, SC
2017 Mediated: Signal Culture Artists in Residence, Davis Gallery, Hobart and William Smith College, Geneva, NY (curator Christine Chin)
2017 Solo program, invited, Ear & Eye Clinic, The School of the Art Institute, Chicago, IL
Statement
Brain signals overload when our bodies are met with physical and mental trauma ranging from a single overwhelming moment, repeated exposure to dehumanizing content, or when we are too young to have developed the mental physiology to process waves needing a more mature anatomy. Meaning, thought, memory, actions, and our means to comprehend rely as sensation. Outside of the reach of language and logic, brains jam and loop without a lyrical narrative end unless the over aroused signal can come to rest through a variety of reprocessing therapies.
While researching the mind/body/signal/sequence phenomenon of trauma, I became an artist-in-residence at Signal Culture. With the aid of their video synthesizers, I was able to model a signal overload of the physical media bodies I have amassed, 16mm educational/medical/hygiene films as well as direct laser animations of looping forms and fractured lyrics. Signal Culture’s Jones Rasterizer inspired the base of my modeling method. I converted the visual image of the filmic body into a controlling signal, which was then applied back onto itself through the Jones Rasterizer. The process resulted in a visual representation of body as signal, a signal which then directs the filmic body’s new reanimated narrative loop.
I have been examining the history and authenticity of photographic media’s ability to represent a human body. Clinical films have been surveying the body, exposing where it hurts, and giving expert instruction on how to best control and understand our uncontrollable selves since motion picture’s invention. Now due to its outdated format, content, and lack of formal beauty, most 16mm educational films are dead rotting media cadavers. Cadavers, both human and filmic, are valuable bodies for research, experimentation, procedural practice, and innovation. Unable to consent to their specific use, the material speaks silently through the physical record of its decay and previous context/use: scratches, cuts, incisions, dissections, transplants, dismemberment, mistakes, and triumphs.
I started digging through medical/educational archives because I had been photographed frequently for pediatric research and was both obsessed with and frightened of finding an image of myself with blacked out eyes. I did not find published photographic evidence of my pediatric history specifically, but I did find images documenting bodies and moments that felt like my own. Medical experts are charged with unpacking what it is to be human and their results are thought to be true. As an artist I am interested in the same questions as well as searching for truth through the use of the media bodies I examine, exhume, and reanimate.