Year of release: 2009
Original format: DV (4.3)
Running time: 1 minute
Screening format: DVD
Credits: A film by Kayla Parker
Director/producer/animator: Kayla Parker
Sound design: Stuart Moore
Production: Sundog Media
Distribution and sales: Sundog Media info@sundog.co.uk
Description
Stop-motion animation of a small white doll: the figure grows from a ball of modelling clay, is cut and sewn shut, and then buried and ‘reborn’, among a nest of white granulated sugar and the dark stain of slut’s wool - the fluffy dust that collects under furniture and along skirting boards.
Production notes
The film White Body is the beginning of a practice-led research journey in which the process of embodied thinking, linked to memories of play during early childhood, is pictured by interaction between the intuitive touch of the artist’s hands and her materials - white modeling clay, sugar and slut’s wool - upon the flat-bed landscape of the rostrum camera, and instruments which cut open and re-close, observe and record.
A series of seven sequential intuitive performances within the miniature landscape under the rostrum camera, the film explores my early childhood memories of secret play: locked in a silent room for a rest after lunch, aged 5 years, I would sculpt tiny figures from the balls of Plasticine I had hidden in the dust under the piano.
Publication and comments
Kerry Baldry on One Minute APEngine: moving image transmission (online) London: Animate Projects (22 September 2009)
ScreenWork2 (2008) film featured as a loop (silent) with research statement in the DVD showcase of practice-based doctorial research in screen media - moving image work on film, video and new media platforms; Journal of Media Practice (Volume 9 / Issue 3 / November 2008) Bristol: Intellect
“The work is both aesthetically and metaphorically feminine and reminds us of Julia Kristeva’s notion of the ‘monstrous feminine’ and the ‘abject’ through female body expulsions. […] As a woman I am both intrigued yet repulsed by the overtly bodily nature of the visual imagery that seems to be explicitly sexual and overwhelming, recalling Cixous’s assertion that women must ‘write from the body’, equating feminine writing with feminine sexuality.”
Extract from review of White Body in the Immersion exhibition at University of Plymouth, by Sally Waterman (28 July 2008)
Audience response
“I can see insect eggs. There's menstruation, and death too... a little cloth doll.”
“The piece is very symbolic of life birth/death and all the threads of baggage in between.”
“It really reminds me of baking a cake.”
“It reminds me of fronds, and little insect eggs.”
“It’s a little voodoo doll...”
Exhibition selected
2010
The Women’s Art Show 2010, Fairfields Art Centre Basingstoke, UK (26 February - 1 April 2010)
London Short Film Festival Femmes Fantastique programme, Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London, UK (9 January 2010)
One Minute (volume 3) touring programme of artists' moving image, curated by Kerry Baldry:
GLIMMER Hull Film Festival closing party, UK (25 April 2010)
The Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, UK. Presented by Purescreen (25 March 2010)
The BAck doOR Melbourne, Australia. Presented by cogcollective in conjunction with suek-artist (27 February 2010)
Art in Unusual Places: "The best in contemporary and experimental animation, film and video artists from across the world" presented by Lumen in the entrance and first floor cinema at the Merrion Centre, Leeds, UK (launch 3 December, screening throughout December and January to 14 January 2010)
2009
One Minute (volume 3) touring programme of artists' moving image, curated by Kerry Baldry:
Art in Unusual Places, "a snapshot of some of the exciting work being produced by UK artists", presented by Lumen in the entrance and first floor cinema at the Merrion Centre, Leeds, UK (launch 3 December, screening throughout December and January to 14 January 2010)
Foyer Gallery, Hull School of Art and Design, UK (9am - 5pm 26 October - 12 November 2009; preview 26 October 5pm - 7pm)
PRISM at Bank St Arts Sheffield, UK (23 October 2009 from 8pm)
Half an Hour from Paradise Marseille Project Gallery, France (19 - 26 September 2009)
All UK Big Screens (27 July - 2 August 2009)
Hull Big Screen, UK (1 June - 31 July 2009)
Presented by Directors Lounge (Berlin) at Contemporary Art Ruhr c.a.r. 09, Essen, Germany (5 - 7 June 2009)
The Apollo Opening Night Herne Hill, London, UK (4 June 2009)
2008
Immersion Scott Building, University of Plymouth, UK. White Body film projected as a loop (silent) onto the gallery floor, with the clay figure enlarged to approximately human scale. Part of the Locate group exhibition, in association with the Land/Water and the Visual Arts research group annual summer symposium Landscape and Beauty. (26 June - 1 July 2008)