IN ALL ITS GLORY

I am interested in the value systems we apply to objects and how those systems can break down. Hoarding entails ascribing value to objects that are no longer functional and hoarding shows itself as a disorder when it affects the function of the individual. It is incredibly difficult to part with an object if one is aware of its full conceptual and aesthetic weight. Psychologist Dr. Randy Frost has likened hoarding disorder to artistic thinking gone mad. I muddy this distinction and engage with the mentality of hoarding disorder in my composite video sculptures. This takes the form of serious play; appreciating all aspects of the objects, reanimating potential energy, observing breakdowns of value, negotiating definitions of function, and reveling in failures of transfiguration. The objects that I find attractive and accessible are those broken, forgotten, sticky, plastic, rusty things that really should have been thrown away, but surround me and demand my attention. I move my hands around them, dropping and throwing, caressing and shaking. Filming and looping the footage distills and preserves the gestures inherent to the object that may have, in reality, lasted only one or two seconds. Sometimes this induces a transformation, and I can draw with vacuum hoses and paint with balloons. Sometimes a sump pump will only ever be a sump pump.