Gender*uck: Online Exhibition
| BIRGITTA HOSEA |
www.birgittahosea.co.uk
Out There in the Dark, 2008-2013
Looped performance with projected animation (stop motion, After Effects)
Out There in the Dark is a live performance in which animation is combined with the living body: the artist becomes a living sculpture, a hybrid being that is half human and half animation. The work disassembles the construction of femininity in classic Hollywood cinema and the experience of performing for the voyeuristic gaze of the camera. Seated on a chair, she is hooded and her face is replaced with that of an animated doll lipsynching to samples of dialogue from Sunset Boulevard (1950). This dialogue is deconstructed, cut into small fragments and repeated to create a frenetic soundtrack. A live video feed of the performance is projected onto a back wall and the artist interacts with the camera during the performance as her gestures (which reference those of Gloria Swanson in the original film) become increasingly hysterical. This work has been performed on stage and in a peep show.
Medium, 2012
15 min loop (site specific performance with projected digital video, animation and live digital drawing)
Taking the role of a techno-medium, Birgitta Hosea channels messages from the media - film and radio - through her multiple digital doubles and live projections of automatic writing, electronic ectoplasmic drawing and animation. Inspired by Victorian spirit photographs and the history of female emancipation through Spiritualism, this tableau vivant explores the act of mediation that is involved in the digital image making process. It examines the connections between a medium, such as film or digital code, through which a message is encoded, stored and transmitted and the psychic medium, a person who transmits messages from the spirit world.
Traion I (Ferme) [created in collaboration with Maryclare Foá], 2014
Life size (collaborative drawing and site-specific installation works, graphite, digital drawing, Flash, Photoshop)
Traion I-IV are a series of installations by Maryclare Foá and Birgitta Hosea, collaborating together as Foá+Hosea. The works were commissioned as a response to Pliny the Elder's legend of the female origin of drawing, in which the daughter of a potter takes a piece of charcoal and traces around the shadow of her departing lover. The first work in the series consists of two life size drawings that were traced around the outlines of the artists themselves. Over the still drawings is projected an animation based on film footage of the two artists pacing around in a continuous loop. The animation spills over the edges of the paper, defying the boundary of a frame as the artists attempt to hold time still.
dotdot dash, 2018
20 mins (live, orchestrated performance with laser pens)
Commissioned by InspiralLondon, a participatory, live animation of visual music is made by the audience in public space through communal light drawing made by lasers and accompanied by improvised singing. With the orchestration based on a chance-based score made by walking, dotdot dash is conducted by Birgitta Hosea in site specific locations to scare away the unknown and reclaim the night for those who could not normally walk the streets at night.