DISORIENTALISM, a collaboration between Katherine Behar and Marianne M. Kim, studies the disorienting effects of technologized labor, junk culture, and consumerism as forces that mediate bodies and instate body-knowledge. Utilizing live performance, video, and photographic projects, DISORIENTALISM is an ongoing effort to reverse-engineer our identities.
An Archaeology of the Mistaken Present, 2007. Photo: Monica Ruzansky
PROJECTS
Video, 4'17"
SYNOPSIS: As factory workers-come-superheroes, the Disorientals offer a humorous portrait of the disorienting effects caused by labor by attempting to reverse engineer their identities. We are "plugging away" in a search for self-recognition that takes us from assembly line drudgery to deflecting bullets, and from a kumquat grove to an iPod groove. Simultaneously producing and consuming the DISO-PLUG, a disoriental invention, we take stock of digital, mechanical, and organic dimensions to ourselves.
Video 2'15"
SYNOPSIS: Within the length of a television commercial break, the Disorientals must attempt to recover their bearings. It's the holiday season and they are momentarily caught inside a blizzard of scattered media. They wander aimlessly through static in attempts to finding a signal that will lead them out before they are completed erased.
Digital Photographs
SYNOPSIS: A photographic project depicting the birth of the Disorientals, this irreverent homage quotes from Western classical sources such as Botticelli's The Birth of Venus and La Primavera and Cranach the Elder's paintings of Adam and Eve. In one image the Disorientals are twin goddesses without modesty. In another they are images fit to sell a product. The photographs play on the sacred and the profane, attraction and repulsion, the erotic and the mythological.
