Part of Spring 1995
Abigail Child is a filmmaker and poet, based in New York, whose cinema explores — and explodes — narrative strategies. This screening will present the second half of the serial film Is This What You Were Born For? — which includes Perils, Covert Action, Mayhem and Mercy (1984-89) — as well as two recent video collaborations: 8 Million (1992), with Ikue Mori, and Through the Looking Lass or Snow White’s Dream (1995) with performer Lenora Champagne.
Child’s earlier series is a collection of short films that work both individually and together to unwrap cinematic convention. Not merely formal, deconstructive gestures, the films veer from the dangerous to the playful and back again. Shot in film noir style, Is This What You Were Born For? undermines the predictability of cinematic narrative.
Her more recent video work continues the grouping of shorter works, or songs. 8 Million is comprised of Fishtank, Shiver, Kiss of Fire, 8 Million Ways to Die, and Faint Clue. These shorter video works chart erotic tales in an urban landscape. ‘The myths of popular culture – romance and TV soaps Ñ provide the motifs for the work which restructure memory/image-fragment to foreground the body against a mechanized landscape.’ Tonight’s screening also includes the premiere of Child’s latest video, Through the Looking Lass or Snow White’s Dream which she describes as ‘a revised Snow White, exploring abstract narrative structures, seduced and reconstructed, a wicked dream.’
Abigail Child will be in attendance to discuss her work.
