In the symbolic world of the unconscious, honey represents health and milk represents life.
The ritual of washing the body with milk and honey is an act of healing and self-validation.
Washing the obsessions off, illuminating the self, and watching from stillness how and where things move.
NEED: Es necesario desnudar el yo para transformarse.
NEEDS :: The Need to Wash the Self with Milk and Honey
Window Installation:: Video, photographic print, audio.
©CLG/2007
-BOP’07 Exhibition, PPG Place, Pittsburgh, PA
-Ellsworth Arts Festival, Shadyside, Pittsburgh, PA
-Future Tenant Gallery, Pittsburgh, Pa
In the Spring of 2007, Katherine Talcott, curator of the Best of Pittsburgh annual exhibition (BOP'07), invited me to create a video installation for the show, using some store front windows that were available at the exhibition site in the PPG building. As a result of this invitation, I created the video The Need to Wash the Self with Milk and Honey, as a continuation of a series of works I've been doing dealing with the idea of NEEDS. Little did I know about the effect it would have...
The exhibition opened in June 2, 2007. My piece was covered on June 4 and a few days later unplugged by the real-state agency that manages the PPG buildings. This caused a whole wave of media reactions that lasted well into the end of the summer. The whole issue?? NUDITY!! The video depicts a performance I did in the forest where I am walking and carrying two buckets, one containing milk and the other honey, and at some point in the performance, I sit down, and bathe myself with these two elements. The video played on a tiny 8" monitor that you could see through small paper cut-outs (the idea was to create a 'pipping tom' exhibit).
Below are some of the articles that were written about this whole situation. My statement remains the same: the whole situation was ridiculous, there was nothing censorable about the video, and a whole lot of Americans need to stop letting corporations rule their morality, sense of aesthetics, and desires. Corporate Pittsburgh remains a provincial, narrow minded, and safe place for conservatives to do their business.
