you really are quite something
2019
26 mins 22 secs
2-channel film projection on a lenticular screen
wooden bases, supported by food packages
225 x 400 cm
Two bodies study one another through the reflection of a mirror. These bodies try to perform multiple identities, at once. They understand one another, but they are also hostile. They challenge each other. How did you get here?
Both are all at once the exotic "Other", and the colonizing "Settler". The one tries to get closer to the other, but boundaries can be crossed, a culture might be appropriated, a claim may be made where there is no entitlement.
The conversation goes from warm to hostile, nurturing to suspicious, as each teases the other through song (remembered and forgotten), language, dress, and the symbolic offering of a mango.
This film is projected on a lenticular screen, its zig zagging surface receives two different projections at once. On one side, the conversation is seen from one vantage point. On the other, the opposite. The experience of moving around the screen allows the visitor to slip from one projected narrative to another.
The screen is supported on poles with wooden bases. To adjust the poles into position, the bases are wedged with packages of Filipino foodstuffs.
This work, the first time I am performing a script, was produced during the "Distributed Identities" residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Canada in 2019.
Video excerpt below (5 mins excerpt of 26 min film).