19 Slip Knots
'19 Slip Knots' is a two-channel video installation. Two twenty-one-inch video monitors are placed on pedestals and separated by about two and a half feet of space between the pedestals. The screens face each other (inward), and each screen has a line of maroon yarn emerging from the bottom. The two lines of yarn cascade down the front of the pedestals and fall into a large mound in the space between the two pedestals on the floor. Both screens are cropped and centrally focused on my mouth. One screen displays me pulling a continuous string of yarn out of my mouth, while the opposite screen shows me pushing a perpetual bundle of yarn into my mouth. Each screen broadcasts exaggerated sounds of the yarn entering and leaving my mouth. I recite short sentences between the two screens to present the illusion that the monitors are conversing with each other.
Screen 1: They think it needs to be concealed.
Screen 2: They no longer have an influence over
how we handle this.
Screen 1: Everyone will blame us.
Screen 2: It isn’t our fault.
Screen 1: To them it will be.
The colour and texture of the yarn after mixing with my saliva imitates an umbilical cord or blood-stained ectoplasm, creating a visceral visual and auditory experience. '19 Slip Knots' is evocative of personal desires for catharsis and societal demands for repression that influenced my internal dialogues following rape.