La Petite Mort par les Fruit

There is a component inherent in almost every person that responds to some sort of sexual or self-awakening. There is a delicious nature to how each one of us came to life. In this video, I used my mind and body to encompass a few themes; love, self indulgence, death, fertility, and the notion of being dirty and clean at the same time.

Often, especially in our current day there is a negative stigma that circles around “dirtying yourself” through the acts of sexual pleasure (especially relevant to women). I wanted to show an opposing side to this stigma by physically dirtying myself with the sticky and messy fruit, but through my facial expressions and body language displaying the sensual lustfulness of being a woman and being a part of a larger process such as birth, love, and death. The act of sex is one that can be underrated or misused, which ultimately decreases its power and true being.

The majority of the color of the fruits I used in this performance is the color of flesh. My acts throughout represent an undoing and giving of ones self over to the pleasures of nature. I bathed myself in the wonders that the natural world provides us and at the same time sucked the life out of them, taking in all the luscious juices which are analogous to fertility and the intuitive nature of a woman, and enjoying the act itself; leaving not only a huge mess; but tasteless, ugly fruit that no longer serves its once powerful and beautiful purpose.

There is a concept of time that follows throughout this narrative, which starts off with a subtle yet strong heart beat, reaches a climax in the middle (just like an orgasm does), and falls down to the raw form of ones self by calming to a pulse. This journey can be seen not only in life itself, but also in certain events and experiences one may attain in such a time frame, which can be considered as the themes I mentioned earlier.

The title of this piece is “La Petite Mort par les Fruits” in our modern day can be translated to the sensation of orgasm as likened to death, by fruits. “La petite mort” is a phrase in French, which describes the post-orgasmic state of unconsciousness and the spiritual release that arrives with having an orgasm that can often be followed by a short period of melancholy or transcendence as a result of such expenditure. French is a sensual, romantic language, which I believe fits perfectly into the mold of such a story as this.

Lastly, Pink Floyd has a sort of sensual and beautiful nature that at the same time brings with it melancholy and darkness. In the studio that I filmed this performance, I started Dark Side of the Moon and let it play throughout the piece. I later used the original audio tracks to match it up with the exact time frame of the music in the footage itself, because my actions were also largely reliant on the sounds I was hearing and almost flowed with the melodic and lyrical being of the album.

 

The Milk Bar

Initially, my project was different. I had recorded my voice as a train of thought, where I would physically voice my inner consciousness bringing my inside voice out into the real world. I then manipulated that audio to create some distortion and put different tracks together. Although in the end, I was not happy with the result that surfaced. I did some more research and came across an amazing composer by the name of Steve Reich.

Steve Reich is a composer who has innovated different patterns and has proven the power of sound through various techniques such as tape loops and phasing in his audio tracks. His work was and is very successful and has gained fame due to its musical content and especially the fact that his compositions take on a slow harmonic rhythm that becomes almost hypnotic. The sound measures and the times where he would choose to stop or start each loop all added something at a larger scale to his work. His audio compositions are where I drew my inspiration for this project from. Here is one of his tracks:

 

Clockwork Orange is an incredible book, and beautifully structured film directed by Stanley Kubrick. The protagonist, main character, and narrator is Alex DeLarge. At the beginning of the film, he is completely independent and a leader/ruler of his entourage. He represents rebellious youth and the angst of a teenager, and is incredibly successful at his acts. As the film progresses, he finds himself in a situation where he is suppressed by higher powers and takes on a robot-like quality. I created a loop of his voice when he talks about walking into the Korova Milk Bar, after vandalizing a couples home, raping the wife, and beating the husband. There is power and strength in Alex’s voice, but as I layered the loops and distorted the sounds, he loses that strength, and he conforms into societies norms- this metaphorical conversion is analogous to the progression of A Clockwork Orange.

Enjoy.