TERRITORIAL IMPERATIVE: A DIALOGUE WITH FEAR
So began the time-arts portion of “Territorial Imperative: A Dialogue With Fear,” an exhibit at Gallery 2. Anderson, Dana Briscoe, Holly L. Hey, and Paula M. Froehle presented widely divergent views on the theme of how women apprehend danger and establish their own territories.
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Anderson takes an irreverent approach in Hoop La!, which was originally intended to be presented as a ritual in back of the gallery in a vacant lot–until Anderson learned that it would shortly be paved over and turned into a parking lot. In light of the fact that it was to be altered so drastically, she says, she couldn’t easily create what she calls a “lullaby to the earth.” Explaining her predicament to the audience, she turns out something that’s part illustration of her intent, part the prayer she’d composed for the ritual, and part dialogue with the audience.
Briscoe’s Legacy is an eight-minute video that explores contemporary standards of beauty in general and the ritualistic waxing or other removal of body hair specifically. The tape, with narration that seems intentionally inaudible, is structured around shots of various body parts: a face, an underarm, a groin, the nape of a neck, a thigh, or a hand waxing a leg. The shots repeat themselves, and Legacy has an element of ponderous, predictable early 1970s feminism: according to the program, the video is about the way society forces women to make certain choices about their bodies. Perhaps if the distorted narration were more intelligible, or if the choice of images were more intriguing, this tape might have been successful. As it is, the most interesting and poetic shots are of the nape and of a pair of feet, in part because they’re unexpected.
