desire
Shout at Eternity, Bain St. Michel, Montreal, Quebec, 2002

desire is a two channel, synchronized video installation whose thematic revolves around a locally abandoned indoor swimming pool. A backlit DVD projection was installed behind the brick wall and a VHS recorder and monitor placed on the floor close to the pool basin.

This installation engages in discussion on popular culture by conjuring up situations that reflect issues around identity, gender and landscape. There are complexities in this urban terrain that that arouse desire, fear and objectification of the body as well as female stereotyping in media culture. This cultivates a veil between private and public domains. The trashy film, the Valley of the Dolls; works perfectly as a metaphor in this instance and draws out this camp and theatrics of life. The woman in the clip on the beach is the classy, idealistic New Englander who is looking for experience and love and the good girl with a million dollar face and all the bad breaks.
There is something strange and haunting about this scene on the public beach that plays as an intrinsic factor in its synchronization to the second video on the monitor of myself reading instructions for a crushed pearl body bath.