Ellie VIdeo

New Animations

Images I've Revisited and Re-Cut

Birds #1

Tracey Emin "I Know, I Know, I Know"

Ellie Print

Zoe Print

Katy Print

Phtos of My Studio

I cleaned (!!!) and put up some new work...

A Note for Watching Videos...

Turn off your sound! We didn't must when recording, but I think that ideally the videos will be silent...

Katy

The first image that came to my mind when I thought about my womb and the way I choose to use it and, just as importantly, NOT use it, was a road. Specifically, a road that I can see goes far into the distance, but the end point is unknown. I don't know how long it is, or where it's going, but I'm on it. in the past, many women's lives were in a sense predetermined by the fact that womanhood centered around childbearing and keeping a family. I see this as a set path with clear steps that are in place for a woman to reach womanhood and thus validate herself individually and even more so, societally. I cannot speak to these women's experiences but I imagine they are vastly different from my own.

The road represents not only my movement through life, but also the direction and indirection that I face everyday as a woman in this would. I have chosen not to use my reproductive organs, on one hand, this has given me freedom and choice, I move through this world without (what I perceive to be) the burden or fear of becoming pregnant. I can go laces and do things on my own accord . I can have an education, a career, a life, that is independent of the attachments and responsibility that comes with motherhood. The road I'm on can go almost anywhere and be almost anything. I have no idea where it leads or what will happen along the way. This freedom and uncertainty in some senses depends on my won choice to disable my reproductive organs.

On the other hand, I haven't chosen a vast field or a blank canvass to represent my choice. It is a road, a defined path that directs me to certain places. While I have made a choice to not get pregnant, this does not divorce me of my femininity or the social forces that define me as such. Using birth control does not make me a man, it does not stop society from perceiving me as a woman. This (in some sense) determines what I do, now I act, what I want, and most of all, how I am treated by others. In other words, being a woman (whether or not I'm using my reproductive organs) creates and shapes the road I'm on. I have choices and my life can go anywhere, but there is a bath that will take me there.

A Few Stills

More Videos...

I'm trying to think about different ways to interact with the projection. Some ideas have included altering the projection itself or moving the body that is being projected on...

here are some experiments:

New Videos

I'm working on new carvings (including Zoe's)here are some trial videos.

Zoe

I think of my organs like a plant. After thinking about it, I think, specifically, that I would like to reimagine them as a sugar snap pea plant. Here is why.

1) I think they are one of the prettiest plants around. The pictures don't really do it justice, but they are a really beautiful muted green color ... maybe you can see it in a few of them. Also I love the tendrils. I think they are so whimsical and cool.

2) They taste really good! Both the tender new leaves and the actual peas. I think that relates (extendddding the metaphor here) to how I value myself and my sexuality both as reproductive organs and apart from that, for their sake alone. The sugar snap pea plant produces tasty pea pods, but it also is a beautiful, tasty, vibrant plant even if you are not eating the peas right now. I make salads and stuff out of the tendrils. Eating the little buds of leaves that aren't even flowers or peas yet is the most indulgent way to eat a piece of a pea plant, it tastes nutty and good.

3) No matter what stage the plant is in right now, there is this potential inside it to reproduce, and to grow, and to be totally different. Also all of that growth etc. depends on the nurturing the plant gets, or on the forces of nature that effect it.

4) The flowers and peas come out of these beautiful leaf axils that kind of look like a heart. Idea that sexuality is intimately tied to love, or at least it can be.

5) Pea plants thrive in cold environments ... they get sweeter! I like this toughing it out, making lemons out of lemonade attitude.

6) When you are cultivating a pea plant (you don't do this THAT much, its more with tomatoes) but you can, if you want to control when you have peas, you can eat more of the little leaf buds and the flowers and the tendrils, specifically picking off the new axil leafs that are set to become flowers and peas and then let them grow when you are ready to have peas. Sometimes this helps the pea plant produce more peas or better peas because you allow it to actually

produce the peas when the weather is optimal for great tasting peas (a little later in the season). I think this really relates to the idea of birth control.

What I'm Thinking About Now...

My end of semester critique was incredibly helpful and very...centering? I received some really good feedback, including the observation that at the end of the semester last year, I kind of dropped the idea of the void...or at least stopped trying to figure out what it could represent in a contemporary context. The other really helpful bit of feedback I received was to make sure that the video component of my project was necessary. I needed to introduce an aspect to my projections that actually required video to capture the "performance".

So, here is how I've taken those critiques:

1) As opposed to the historical notion promoted by the 18th century anatomical models, that insisted that a woman's importance rested in her ability to reproduce (as seen when one removed the baby from her abdomen exposing "the void"), contemporary culture promotes a very different idea of the reality of reproduction. In order to translate the significance of reproduction, I have been thinking a lot about it's meaning to me. If I got pregnant today or tomorrow, my life would change significantly...but definitely not for the best, as perhaps a woman living in the 18th century would think. My life would change in the following ways: 1) my future goals: (which include possibly traveling or maybe going back to school would be edited. I would have to support and provide a stable environment for my child. 2) my current lifestyle: not that I don't take care of my body, but my primary concern would have to be for the health of the child, not my impulsive, rather self-serving lifestyle as a college student... no social drinking, definitely no smoking of any kind (which isn't a problem, really), sex would also be either out of the question or irregular...not to mention my body would completely change. No thank you. So, I guess what I realized is that in a contemporary context, reproduction actually can take away power or agency for a certain group of women who are in my same situation (students, young adults, young professionals etc). While the "void" in the past represented a negative absence, I gladly adopt the notion that my reproductive organs will go unused. If the anatomical porcelain dolls promoted the idea that filling the "void" with a baby brought women purpose, power and social significance as "life givers", I can adopt the same idea and fill my "void" with what I find to be significant, important and relevant. While at one point in time having a baby brought women social status or certain opportunities and recognition, today, for many women choosing to not have a baby her womb grants her different opportunities. It is interesting to think about the significance not filling the "void" with a baby is for different people, what does that absence mean for different women?

This question seemed incredibly pertinent. So, I decided to explore the meaning of the "void" on both a personal and interpersonal level...I have started to ask people who I consider to be part of this subculture what they would put in their "void". So now, the "void" has started to change in size and shape based on what is deemed significant by my contemporaries.

Part Two: How to make video and performance more relevant in my projections

One resolution to the static nature of my projections is animation as a way to promote the idea of interactivity and continual presence of these differing images and ideas about "the void" for different people. A really helpful critique I received from my panel was the lack of activity or interaction my projections called for, which completely defeats the conceptual purpose of this exploration. I can see this idea expanding to incorporating movement and multiple figures at some point but for now I need to experiment with the animations (some of which I've been posting for a few weeks). The projections I've created thus far have had more to do with my own ideas about the "void". I've realized the way I think about the absence of these sex organs or using them is less serious, the imagery is a bit whimsical, actually. I guess to me, the space of the "void" would be better occupied with random, light-hearted, even disconnected or confusing imagery. Perhaps the notion of freedom and complete control over my own body is also present in my animations. I'm really interested to see what other people would fill this this space!

Continued...

More animations!

Animation #3