Lattice Shell builds upon themes of engagement and resolution with the creation of a short film and viewing cell in the form of a geodesic dome.
I evoke Antonin Artaud’s Manifesto The Theatre and Cruelty, found in his seminal The Theatre and Its Double. Artaud had a desire to create ‘a new theatrical language of totem and gesture’ – a space that would assault the senses, expose the subconscious, and shatter false realities. Artaud was convinced of the potential of this kind of experience. Destructive feelings could be purged, allowing for people to heal and feel the joy that collective society forces them to repress. My work intends to probe many levels of experience and awaken a viewer out of passive observation, liberating them to re-envisioning reality. The olfactory, tactile, spatial and auditory are engaged to create a universe of envelopment and deliver the audience to another plane.
The film takes a precursory inspiration from D.H. Lawrence novella, St. Mawr. In Francisco LaRubia-Prado’s Alchemical Creation: The Art of Transformation in D.H. Lawrence’s St. Mawr he explores a creative interpretation of D. H. Lawrence’s novel St.Mawr and its psychological transformation the main character Lou Witt and her in relationship tothetitular hourse, St. Marwr. LaRubia-Prado’s argues that throughout the centuries, and across cultures, the presence of a distinctive horse in a literary text—and in film— results in: the restoration of equilibrium and wholeness in situations where balance and a sense of totality has been lost. The mind projects onto the horse the energy that translates an unconscious “inner problem”. The unconscious is seeking expression in an embodied object.
In the film bread is proxy for the body and features the preparation the traditional Ukrainian Easter bread, Paska. This powerfully symbolic bread, made in an infinite number of variations, is baked during the Easter season and taken with other ceremonial food on Holy Saturday to be blessed.
An older custom of its creation, which is still practiced in some Ukrainian regions and diasporas, is to create dough ornaments for the paska. The symbolism of these ornaments, braids, thorns, spirals, crosses, is connected with spring themes: the awakening of nature, resurrection and rebirth.I conjure KENNETH ANGER and his concepts of FILM AS MAGICAL RITUAL’ specifically the film Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome/ Marked by Fast cutting and superimpositions and a self referential nature with clips from other films results in a hypnotic clashing of textures. imparting an arresting atmosphere
Lattice Shell extracts the Edenic landscape of Central California, reconciling the histories of animal husbandry and agricultural abundance with the growing threat of societal collapse, echoing ideas notions of fertility and infertility. Lattice Shell conjures up the symbolic fecundity of the human body and of the land we sow.
Upon analysis of work, I discover parallels between Lattice Shell and"Earth", a 1930 Ukrainian Soviet film directed by Oleksandr Dovzhenko. Dovzhenko's use of imagery, symbolism, and montage is particularly striking in "Earth". The film is filled with powerful visual metaphors, such as the repeated images of plowing and planting that represent the cycles of life and death, and the depiction of the earth as a living organism.
Lattice Shell’ opens the concept as a communal equivalent to previous self-contained iterations and highlights the layered and self-referential nature.This alternative reality houses bodily sculptural constructions of manzanita salvaged from The Donald and Sylvia Natural Reserve. within the wooden assemblage are blown glass vessels functioning as reservoirs for a handcrafted scent, evoking moss and musk Vinyl tubing and copper piping fragment the manzanita, evoking the alimentary canal of the body And Fallopian tubes.
The forms also suggest a hermetic environment, medical mechanism of support. The manzanita in the sculpture was foraged in the Mclaughlin landscape after working with Ecology PHD students who have implemented a project called Hands on the Land. The organization works on landscape renewal through repairing and restoring native ecosystems. Making the land more resilient to wildfire is a focus of the restoration work.
