homeostasis
homeostasis
Installation photos of Homeostasis trio from group show “In the absence of...” at Greg Kucera Gallery, 2015
Large-scale looping three-channel video installation with sound
About Homeostasis:
In Xan Aranda’s concert film Fever Year, musician Andrew Bird speculates that the low-grade fever he’s been experiencing continuously during a particularly strenuous touring schedule is not an indicator of illness, but an adaptation his body has developed to deal with his environment - a new kind of stability.
In general, from day to day, I’m not sure how I’m feeling, in my body. I’m not sure if the vague maladies I experience are the means by which my body is healing itself or deteriorating, whether my efforts to repair it are productive or destructive, whether an event is a cause or an effect. No healing process is completely linear, going unwaveringly from hurt to well, but some are more decisive; when trends are subtle or cyclical, it’s easy to think that my body’s work-arounds are becoming its norm.
This Homeostasis trio is part of a series of looping video pieces depicting a psycho-anatomy, my imagined insides. During this process, several works have been on my mind: Susan Robb’s sculptures of her father’s internal nasal polyps based solely on his descriptions, and for this trio especially, Anish Kapoor’s Marsyas, three massive rings held in suspension by stretched red vinyl to make a building-scale sculpture of bodily tunnels. Additional inspiration comes from my mother’s physical therapy practice; both scientific and mysterious, it’s aesthetically free of new-agey stagecraft but full of exciting revelations of viscera in constant wiggly motion, membranes opening and closing, and energy swooshing around.
In Xan Aranda’s concert film Fever Year, musician Andrew Bird speculates that the low-grade fever he’s been experiencing continuously during a particularly strenuous touring schedule is not an indicator of illness, but an adaptation his body has developed to deal with his environment - a new kind of stability.
In general, from day to day, I’m not sure how I’m feeling, in my body. I’m not sure if the vague maladies I experience are the means by which my body is healing itself or deteriorating, whether my efforts to repair it are productive or destructive, whether an event is a cause or an effect. No healing process is completely linear, going unwaveringly from hurt to well, but some are more decisive; when trends are subtle or cyclical, it’s easy to think that my body’s work-arounds are becoming its norm.
This Homeostasis trio is part of a series of looping video pieces depicting a psycho-anatomy, my imagined insides. During this process, several works have been on my mind: Susan Robb’s sculptures of her father’s internal nasal polyps based solely on his descriptions, and for this trio especially, Anish Kapoor’s Marsyas, three massive rings held in suspension by stretched red vinyl to make a building-scale sculpture of bodily tunnels. Additional inspiration comes from my mother’s physical therapy practice; both scientific and mysterious, it’s aesthetically free of new-agey stagecraft but full of exciting revelations of viscera in constant wiggly motion, membranes opening and closing, and energy swooshing around.
© Britta Johnson 2015
kmpi
kmpi
More work from Visceral, a series about healing ︎︎︎