Geoff Bennington

In this piece, Geoff Smoked cigarettes while writing the phrase "I Love You You Fucking Junky" on a piece of canvas as a way of coping with his older brothers death from a heroin overdose. In doing so he also created a ritualistic act to connect with addiction. Geoff smoked about 30 cigarettes within two hours for this, creating an object from his own discomfort. Later, to complete the ritual, he burned the canvas.

A Shift in Focus

This project addressed the ritual of a drug addiction. On one side was a huge mirror that Kristin cut lines (of plaster intending to look like heroin) out onto. On the other side she rolled logs of clay, creating a circular base and gradually building it up. At first, the lines were cut neatly and arranged in straight lines. The rolling of the clay was done with care and attention and proper attachment methods. More attention was paid to the clay, with a few interruptions to carefully cut lines. Gradually, the focus was shifted to the lines. The clay was rolled more quickly and slopped on, causing the shape to lose its stability. The lines got bigger and less attention was paid to their layout. The whole process became more and more frantic and the neatness and care was completely lost by the end.

This project was done as a tribute to a close friend of mine who has been struggling with a drug addiction to heroin for the past few years. I have watched as he tried to balance his sober, real life (represented by the clay) with his hidden addiction (represented by the plaster lines). At first, the drugs did not seem to affect his life in any intense way. Gradually, however, the addiction became more important than his real life, taking over. He struggled to balance is sober life with his addiction, but the beast inside created by the drugs became too strong. This project was intended as a tribute to my friend and a release for my own feelings of watching a beautiful life frantically turn into chaos.

Lauren Schleider

In this piece, Lauren gave a brief oral history of social control theory, stressing that informal social control is executed by a series of sanctions and punishments. The dialogue was directed towards gender theory, addressing the potential problems of such a strict system. The dialogue itself was split into six sections, the final of which confronted the audience asking if progress is being made. Between each part of dialogue, Lauren completely cubmerged her head in a tank of water for as long as she could hold her breath. When she came up, she immediately began speaking again, visibly in pain from her previous actions.

Water was used to symbolized women and femininity, as it often is in literature. Waer possesses great power, and people constantly (unsuccessfully) try to control it. The submerging was done to represent the pressure and punishment to which both society and individuals are subjected. Ultimately, the individual punishes herself for these imposed social laws, but the tank serves as a reminder that such pressure is put into place by outside forces and gives a graphic image of struggle.

Connie Shieh

"Once Unhappiness is Recognized, it Cannot be Ignored."

Having been part of several groups of extremely tight knit friends and unhappy with it, I had morphed myself into someone I was not comfortable being. As I was flipping through my archives, I realized that most of the groups that I had immersed myself in consisted of four people, including myself. This structure of four best friends is riveting because there tends to be a pairing off behavior which forces a struggle to maintain and/or further this grand ally. Having jumped from circle to circle with this particular group dynamic, I have found that time and time again, I was easily swayed to do something I did not want to do due to the fact that I did not want to disrupt what we had built.

In response to the Ritual Project, I decided to program a game where the player is trying to catch my unhappiness. Once I fully realized and brought into my consciousness that I was indeed not happy with myself nor the friends I had surrounded myself with, I could not ignore it. The unhappiness was there and its recognition forced me to take action upon it which in a sense broke a seriously detrimental ritual in my life.

Instructions:
1. Refresh browser
2. Click Play
3. Catch/click my grumpy face once you recognize it
4. Repeat steps 1, 2, and 3 to play again,

Cindy Paauw

Sefira Bell-Masterson

“Now Enter Grief and Kneeling”
Sefira Bell-Masterson

The audience entered the room, which was empty except for a ladder, three mirrors, a clock on the wall and a scale piled high with used tissues on a white pedestal. Sefira was dressed in a white lacy dress, with chains and locks wrapped around her body and leg. She wore a white mask on her face with a line of safety pins down one side. The mask was chained to her body. Sefira was standing on the top of a ladder when the audience entered. She set the clock to 9:00 and made a hash mark below the clock in white chalk on the black wall. She then descended the ladder and approached the first mirror. She wrote “Day 1” and then a series of numbers in red lipstick on the mirror. She added the numbers, then returned to the ladder and climbed back up. At the top of the ladder she took out a tissue, blew her nose and threw the used tissue onto the pile on top of the scale below. She then set the clock to 12:00 and descended the ladder again. Below the first set of numbers she wrote a second set, climbed back up the ladder, blew her nose, threw the tissue onto the scale, and set the clock to 6:30. She descended the ladder, wrote a zero below the other numbers, turned to face the audience and told them “I’m not very hungry, I had a big lunch.” She ascended the ladder, blew her nose, threw the tissue on the scale, set the clock to 9:00, made a hash mark next to the previous one, descended the ladder, wrote “Day 2” and then a series of numbers on the mirror which she then totaled. She repeated this process five times. Each time she wrote a number much smaller than the others she would turn to the audience and make an excuse for not eating. Progressively the lipstick she was using to write on the mirrors smudged red onto her dress, her mask and the tissues she was using.

For years, as a womyn with an eating disorder, ritual dominated my life. There were the rituals of weighing, the rituals of counting, the rituals of exercise, the rituals of grieving, the rituals of examining myself and my favorite – the ritual of lying.

For this piece, I took these rituals and compressed them, enabling them to communicate new meaning. When combined, the rituals became self reflective. Grief was weighed on my digitally precise scale. The record of my caloric consumption and expenditure covered the mirrors, obscuring my image. My voice as I told one of my expertly crafted lies fell flat against the evidence irrefutably visually assembled.

Negativeland

Thoughts, please?