Excerpt from Ectoplasm, Maren Elliott
Still image from video work. In this black and white video, we see the dancing figure of the artist, a woman in her 30s wearing a black unitard with her hair in two french braids. She is in the hallway of an old industrial building. She travels up and down the hallway, osculating between foreground and background. She waves her arms, threads them through one another, breathes. She moves from high levels to low levels, making shapes with her legs and spinning in circles. Sometimes her expression is scared, neutral, and at other times blissful. Between the camera and the dancer is a clear membrane that is being shaken, stretched, wiggled, and twisted. These movements of the membrane distort the image of the hallway and the dancer, stretching and vibrating the scene into different levels of abstraction.
Title: Excerpt from Ectoplasm / How do I know if I'm dissociating?
Artist: Maren Elliott
Date: 2024
Medium/Materials: Video with analogue distortion (jellyplate)
Dimensions: 00:00:35 excerpt from 00:13:00 video
Form/Genre: Video art, performance art
Key Terms/Subject/Tags: Mental illness; Anxiety; Movement; Embodiment
Artist Statement:
Movement has become a prominent focus of Maren Elliott for the last few years, and she has been particularly inspired by Punking, a queer expressive dance form that originated in the gay club scene of Los Angeles during the 1970s. Punking is the predecessor to the street dance style now known as Whacking (also spelled Waacking). In a setting where homosexuality was illegal, punking provided an outlet for imagination to transform pain and oppression into beauty and expression. Posing, the first element of Punking, allows Elliott to sublimate her emotions in dance. It also provides moments of stillness that can become imagery for figurative art. As a next generation (NG Punker), Elliott feels fortunate to have this outlet to explore her deep emotions and issues related to mental illness/health, gender, queerness, and sexuality. Within her movement practice, she has been taking videos and exploring techniques of analogue distortion (for example, using glass, plastic, shadows, water and other objects). The distortion is driven by curiosity and play, a needed lightness in a space that can be very vulnerable at times.
Cultural Context / Story Behind the Work:
An exploration of Elliott’s experiences of altered states of consciousness as they relate to navigating life with a mood and anxiety disorder. Living with a mental illness can come with a lot of stigma on top of the challenges inherent to the illness itself. Sometimes she feels like she is drowning in the rivers of life. Art allows Elliott to share her own narrative of the experience. It also helps her appreciate, despite the major challenges of living with her brain, the awe and silliness, empathy and depth of emotion she can access and share with others. Creating has been a major tool for her survival.
Rights for this Image:
This digital image is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0. You are free to share it for non-commercial purposes, as long as you credit the artist.
Learn More:
Instagram: @marenkelliott
Facebook: @marenkelliottart