still from video "Burning House"
projected in the performance space

The video work, projected into an alcove in the public space represented my doghouse being burned to ashes. The video shows the burning doghouse (it is difficult to tell the scale, so it could almost be a full scale house) then the footage is reversed and the entire piece is looped. I made this film in my garden while burning the old and rotten kennel. It was a real-life action (to dispose of the kennel) and the filming of this act was an intention to use the image as metaphor, as an image to represent meanings beyond the original act. The new meanings relate to transformation by fire, destruction and recreation as the object is reconstituted through reversal of the footage. The image resonates with the live performance in that both represent a reversal that is creative and transformational. I also hoped to juxtapose two separate images(both linked to my own life) with the aim of generating new readings and connections between the images.

Both works (performance and video) were also held in dialogue around this concept of reversal or inversion. The doghouse is transformed from a shell of embers to a reconstituted structure. Something that is ruined restores itself. In the case of talking mirror - something that is inverted reflects itself.