Friday, May 2, 2008 @ 8:00 PM
An evening with Shana Moulton
Artist-in-attendance
For this very special night with video and performance artist Shana Moulton, PDX audiences will get a unique peak into the strange world of Whispering Pines. In these videos and performances, Moulton plays the part of Cynthia, her hypochondriac alter-ego, who we accompany on her endless quest for relief and stability in an overwhelming world through a variety of self-help books and new age devices. Tonight’s program will feature selections from the Whispering Pines video series, as well as two live multi-media performances where Moulton will bring Cynthia to life right before your eyes!
Electric Blanket Temple Altar
Shana Moulton
6 min / 2005
A self-help book guides the reader through a series of self-esteem exercises that culminate in a theosophical theory of electricity. Scenes from the reader’s life illustrate the effect these exercises have on reality.
Whispering Pines 8
Shana Moulton
8 min / 2006
Fueled by the sugar-free drink Crystal Light, Cynthia methodically fills a vase with alchemical home decorating items. Once her project is completed, Cynthia is again left to dwell in her thoughts. Suddenly a ladder grows out of the vase. Cynthia climbs the ladder and - through a trap door - enters an ecstatic rave.
Whispering Pines #4
Shana Moulton
12 min / 2007
This installment of Whispering Pines finds Cynthia on a quest for relief from her carpal tunnel. She visits an Avon lady/medicine woman in the forest and receives a series of treatments. Having gained a new sense of physical liberation from the Avon lady’s remedies, Cynthia removes her clothes and runs into the forest to perform an ecstatic dance of liberation. Liberation leads to transportation to an abstracted world where Cynthia discovers that understanding math is the key to understanding nature, the physical world and her body.
Cynthia’s Moment
Shana Moulton
20 min / live performance with video
Moulton brings Cynthia and her strange world to life through live performance and projected video, creating a unique experience that is equal parts personal growth workshop, dance recital, instructional video and fairytale. Cynthia, an anxiety-ridden hypochondriac, wears clothing embedded with medical devices and surrounds herself with inspirational new age knickknacks in order to cope with her life. Through her banal home decorations, Cynthia searches for fulfillment, purpose and salvation. Her struggles with the mundane, the eclectic and the disposable offer a unique perspective on the relationship between spirituality and consumerism in contemporary society.
Feeling Free with 3D Magic Eye Remix
Shana Moulton
9 min / live performance with video
While watching a dated workout video hosted by Angela Landsbury, Cynthia attempts to follow the televised workout in her living room even as elements of her home decor begin to appear onscreen. Deriving its title from an inspirational segment of Lansbury’s program, Feeling Free subjects the appropriated footage to eccentric visual and audio displacements, culminating in a live psychedelic dance sequence set to a remix of the program’s insipid theme song.
Featured Artist Shana Moulton
Shana Moulton creates performance and video works that examine bodily and spiritual anxieties and their relationship to popular culture, self-help goods and functionless consumer objects. She constructs worlds in which the goofily fantastic and the humiliatingly banal brush against each other and where mystical revelations unexpectedly emerge from everyday situations. Moulton’s video work has been screened and exhibited internationally, including at Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh; Electronic Arts Intermix, New York; and Internationale Kurzfilmtage, Oberhausen.. Moulton currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.
This event was made possible thanks to a generous grant from The Oregon Council For The Humanities.