Narrative Short
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Credit: Writer, Director, Producer
When a new parent's postpartum depression devolves into bizarre hallucinations, an escape from motherhood becomes necessary.
In development
BALD is a play about femininity and value; hair and race; vulnerability and reprisal. It is loosely inspired by true events.
Sisters Harma and Nachma live in a small town that is home to the LAKES haircare factory, where Harma also works. When she wakes up one morning inexplicably bald, the whole town is flummoxed. Things get darker as the balding attacks strike more women, including labor organizer Rina and even the LAKES hair model, Myrina. As the town hunts for the so-called Phantom Barber, the women begin to grapple with their complex personal histories with hair.
A reading of BALD was performed March 8, 2020 at the Brooklyn Arts Exchange with the support of the Brooklyn Arts Council. The reading was directed by Sarah Cameron Hughes with performances by Nyahalé Allie, Tyler Caffall, Mike Mikos, Nadia Pinder, Mayadevi Ross, Imran Sheikh, Aneesh Sheth, Avanthika Srinivasan, and Kita Updike. Produced by Emma Orme, with assistance from Kallan Dana and stage management by Margaret Gleberman.
All photos by Gigi Gatewood.
An ongoing video travelogue in which intimate interactions between seeming strangers are staged in public spaces of cities around the world. Cities included to date are: Paris, New York, Barcelona, Bangalore, Accra, and Knoxville. Scroll down for video excerpts.
Video, TRT 15 minutes, Ongoing
Performers: Christophe Counil, Florent Ruppert, Philippe Pasquini & Julie Coutereau, Andy Tesoro, Katherine Brook, Joshua Gelb, Nick Cregor & Serge Stephan, Brinda Jacob, Milan Cariappa, Grace, Mickey, Abigail Lucien, Jessica Gatlin, and Dan Hood.
Press: Oficina36, Centre Clark
In this video interviews with women in Indian cities on the subject of gender discrimination are transposed onto the bodies and voices of men. The men, having no prior rehearsal or knowledge of the content of the stories, recite them from a teleprompter, telling the women's experiences as their own.
Video, TRT 17 minutes, 2014
Press: Centre Clark, Artcritical
A live edition of the Presumptuous series which took place on a bus to Boston. Part of Flux Factory's Fung Wah Biennial exhibition.
Performance, 2016
Performers: Amaryah Armstrong, Jason Eppink, Caitlin Foley, Sunita Prasad, and Nathaniel Sullivan
Press: Art in America, Atlantic Citylab
Video documentation by Bryan Chang
Video documentation by Bryan Chang
Video documentation by Bryan Chang
Clock is an installation which reflects on my body as a timepiece. Having recently given birth for the first time, the insipid "biological clock" which is so frequently invoked has been "fulfilled" in its typical interpretation. But the body marks time in ways other than reproduction, and while the relationship to time takes a radical shift in the process of becoming a parent –going back in time to one's own childhood; feeling one's time constricted to the restraints of caring for a child; experiencing your home anew at odd times of the night; the accelerated time of a child's growth; the endless time of their wailing– this shift has only thrown in greater relief the fact that was always there: that the body is the primary timepiece.
In this work, rhythms of the body are looped in orbs that echo the shape of a pregnant belly. Every moment is pregnant with the next, which is a reproduction of the last as the loops make a silent drumbeat thumping on.
This tabletop installation highlights the gestural performances in scenes from Bollywood films in which women are caught in fires. My research into this trope in Indian cinema makes reference to the agnipariksha episode of the epic Ramayana, in which Sita is compelled to undergo a trial by fire to prove her purity after she was kidnapped and presumably raped by the demon Ravana.
Press: Centre Clark
Photo by Paul Litherland
Photo by Paul Litherland
Tender Comrades plays on the conventions of documentary filmmaking to tell a fictional story of a radical intellectual celebrity named Sophie Vix Maurer and her biggest fan. Shot partially at Occupy Wall Street, the film uses real-life events, fake interviews, and lo-fi re-enactments to illuminate a seldom examined history of anarchism and subversive movements.
Video, TRT 23 minutes, 2014
With Performances by: Laryssa Husiak and Chris Giarmo; Camera by Gigi Gatewood; Music by Nick Cregor; Production Assistance by Jean Barberis
For one year I maintained two profiles on a popular breast-implant donation and social networking site: one profile as a "Model" named Sunny, and one as a "Benefactor" named Benny. On this site, (mostly) men offer small donations towards (mostly) women's breast implants in exchange for photos and videos that are usually pornographic. The year of performance research into this unique community, processed through my own analysis of gender, labor, and body politics, is archived as a website which echoes and undermines the original site's aesthetics.
Link and password available upon request.
Performance and interactive website, 2009.
programming by Laryssa Husiak
Sunny and Benny, my two drag alter-egos who were born on a website devoted to breast implant crowdfunding, in a scene whose script is drawn from interactions on the site.
Video, 3 minutes, 2009
A coin-operated video booth featuring Sunny and Benny, my two drag personas born on a breast implant crowdfunding site.
Video installation with coin-operator, 2009
An interactive projection which attaches a dancing shadow to the viewer wherever they stand on the dancefloor. Made in collaboration with Frédéric Durieu for Concert Hall at the Palais de Tokyo.
Software and video installation, 2014
An installation created in Barcelona, based on an incident in local history. The project re-tells the story of Michele Angiolillo, an anarchist assassin who avenged the brutal internment and torture of his comrades in Montjuic Castle, a looming structure overlooking the city which is now a tourist attraction. This intriguing history includes acts of courage and poetic flair, as Angiolillo was remembered both for his bravery and his eloquence. His final word before being executed for the assassination of Spanish Prime Minister Antonio Cánovas was "Germinal." This mysterious watchword invokes the novel by Émile Zola, popular amongst trade unionists across ideologies at the time, as well as an image of resistance as a budding force of nature, germinating under the surface of oppression.
Kinetic sculpture, video, fabric, and zine, 2013
video documentation of kinetic sculpture
excerpt of looping video
a video installation and performance that asks everyday people to be visionaries and think in terms both grand and immediate about what they want. The video is comprised of interviews in which people were asked to respond on the spot to a single prompt:
Envision fully a single aspect of utopia.
Video and performance, TRT 30 minutes, 2010
photo by Gigi Gatewood
This video was made in response to cautionary tales from women who had been chased by attackers. I decided to practice being chased to prepare myself to also be a victim. The absurd excess of this gesture satirizes the placement of the onus of violence-prevention on potential victims, thus making violence an ever-present specter in the lives of even those who have not (yet) been attacked.
Video, 4 minutes, 2008
The story of Luisa, a young woman who decides to exercise her right to have an abortion. The film uses a number of genres—the musical, comedy, and sci-fi—to engage the issue of reproductive rights.
16mm, TRT 16 minutes, 2006
