Victoria Bradbury
Mar 25, 2009
Tomorrow night, Hallwalls, and Alfred based media artist Victoria Bradbury, will present a night of the artist’s short films for a mere $7. Victoria comes with a strong list of references including Squeaky Wheel, Julliard and Under the Table and is currently the featured artist in the cinema vestibule.
In 1692, Victoria Bradbury’s tenth great-grandmother was convicted of witchcraft for having allegedly turned herself into a blue boar. Victoria uses film and her adept creativity to document the said woman’s transformation as though in the Salem Courtroom would have imagined it in their suspicious mind. But Victoria is not only talented, she’s sweet and nice too. We emailed her a few questions to which she thoughtfully and fully answered:
You’ve exhibited worldwide, are you still excited to show in Buffalo, at Hallwalls?
Absolutely. I am glad to have my solo screening debut in Buffalo at Hallwalls. As a worldwide center for media art, Buffalo offers an audience with a rich understanding of experimental temporal works. My videos weave media, making and drawing into embellished histories and genealogies. I look forward to bringing this multidisciplinary approach to time to an engaged Buffalo audience.
How has the blue boar become iconic for you?
In Blue Boar, I compress history, media, and personal genealogies. The boar is the fantasy of the people sitting in the courtroom hearing the testimony, ‘I saw Ms. Bradbery go into her gate, turn the corner, and immediately, there darted out of her gate, a blue boar.’ Three-hundred years of history are compressed in a one-minute loop of a woman eternally turning herself into a blue boar and trampling the flowers. Video and fantastical plant and animal imagery are the appropriate media to re-articulate this genealogy as gardening, witchcraft, and the electronic signal are all metamorphic media.
Where do you get ideas for the other films you’ve made?
Integral to my process, is dividing my time between digital and analog tools. I consider software and physical materials as one and the same; they are reductive and additive process. Methodology intertwines with content. I align gestures and materials to reveal form. Form inspires movement which grows toward narrative. I make lists, plays on words and culture, and I lay images and ideas in different configurations across time. I refrain from creating a completely refined digital model and I leave buzzes, blips, threads, and seams, to expose the medium and leave evidence of the artist’s hand. I embrace the flip flop between determining the result and holding on for the ride.
I create characters which are simultaneously expressing a cool detachment from and a human intimacy with their surroundings. They are searching for the familiar while engulfed by the strange. The worlds which they inhabit can be unpredictable and it is unclear how much control they have over the events taking place. Outwardly, they appear to exist in their space and time, moving as bodies over waves. Inwardly, they are in a state of closed introspection. My persona recall the emotion of early still photography–the withdraw into one’s own psychological space resulting in a dispassionate stance. To further convey the sensory experience of the character’s perception, I exploit the conventions of the pre-cinematic moving image by referencing the slow, uneven frame-rate of the Mutoscope or loop of the Zoetrope. There is no fear of the device, just pure material, and the willingness to succumb to chance. I give a voice to digital tools as a ventriloquist to a dummy.
Here is the line-up of Victoria’s shorts to be shown:
Crossing (2007, 5min. 30sec.) A dual channel video about dangerous waters and a pilgrimage with voice over text from the artist’s Great(x10)-Grandmother’s Salem witch trial.
Ocean of Oceans (2008, 10min.) A figure is burdened by cumbersome limbs as she churns in ocean waves, then moves toward a horizon. Her doppelganger uses the long arms as an asset, sailing through sea and space with ease. Sound design by Lily Wolfe.
Pioneer (2008, 2min.) A series of short video animations of The Pioneer moving through the American West of today and the open desert of days gone by asking “Where’s my horse/house?”
They Are Coming (2008, 2 min.) A bed bug moves frantically. He is expecting unwanted guests.
37 Red Hats (2008, 8min. 46sec.) A 2008 visit to Beijing in which the artist located and tracked down every Pizza Hut location within the city limits
And This, Of Course, Is the Earth Down Here (2008, 5min. 30sec.) A journey in a canoe bookended by the mechanics of an eclipse and long-armed-spoon-headed boaters beamed onto the surface from the sky.
The Hat (2007, 4 min. 30 sec.) A story of love and control between a woman, a ventriloquist dummy, and a trick hat.
Yonghy Bonghy Bo (2005, 2min. 30sec.) A super 8 film about unrequited love between bumpy-headed Yonghy and Zelda, a married dummy.
Arms (2007, 1 min. 15 sec.) Arms, unicycles, cookware, and electronic toys gently collide.
A Travelling Home Show (2009, 6 min. 45 sec.) A Video Mutoscope performed visual narrative about how the Pioneer came to lose her horse and her house.
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You are amazing. Sorry I can’t be there.