Year of release: 2009
Original format: DV (4.3)
Running time: 1 minute
Screening format: digital screening versions available
Credits: A film by Kayla Parker
Director/producer/animator: Kayla Parker
Sound design: Stuart Moore
Production: Sundog Media
Distribution and sales: Sundog Media sundogmedia@gmail.com
Description
Stop-motion animation of a small white doll: the figure grows from a ball of modelling clay, is cut and sewn shut, and then buried and ‘reborn’, among a nest of white granulated sugar and the dark stain of slut’s wool - the fluffy dust that collects under furniture and along skirting boards.
Production notes
The film White Body is the beginning of a practice-led research journey in which the process of embodied thinking, linked to memories of play during early childhood, is pictured by interaction between the intuitive touch of the artist’s hands and her materials - white modeling clay, sugar and slut’s wool - upon the flat-bed landscape of the rostrum camera, and instruments which cut open and re-close, observe and record.
A series of seven sequential intuitive performances within the miniature landscape under the rostrum camera, the film explores my early childhood memories of secret play: locked in a silent room for a rest after lunch, aged 5 years, I would sculpt tiny figures from the balls of plasticine I had hidden in the dust under the piano.
Publication and comments
Extracts from the film White Body feature in the showreel for Screenworks, the peer-reviewed online publication of practice research in film and screen media. Screenworks is supported by Digital Cultures Research Centre
University of the West of England, Bristol. ISSN 2514-3123 (April 2018).
‘Artwork - Kayla Parker - White Body - 2009’ [film and artist’s statement] Critical Contemporary Culture Journal Issue IV PLAY. 1 April 2015. London: LSE Sociology Department, London School of Economics.
‘White Body: animating feminine pleasure’ Body Space Technology Journal Volume 10 / Number 2 Summer 2011. Brunel University. ISSN 1470-9120.
Available: https://www.bstjournal.com/articles/10.16995/bst.77/
‘White Body’ film and research statement with peer reviews, JMP Screenworks Volume 2 (published online Summer 2011).
Available: https://screenworks.org.uk/archive/volume-2/white-body
HerStory exhibition DVD, produced by Women’s Work, Winchester (July 2011)
'Kerry Baldry on One Minute' APEngine: moving image transmission (online) London: Animate Projects (22 September 2009)
ScreenWork2 (2008) film featured as a loop (silent) with research statement in the DVD showcase of practice-based doctorial research in screen media - moving image work on film, video and new media platforms; distributed with Journal of Media Practice (Volume 9 / Issue 3 / November 2008) Bristol: Intellect.
“The work is both aesthetically and metaphorically feminine and reminds us of Julia Kristeva’s notion of the ‘monstrous feminine’ and the ‘abject’ through female body expulsions. […] As a woman I am both intrigued yet repulsed by the overtly bodily nature of the visual imagery that seems to be explicitly sexual and overwhelming, recalling Cixous’s assertion that women must ‘write from the body’, equating feminine writing with feminine sexuality.”
Extract from review of White Body in the Immersion exhibition at University of Plymouth, by Sally Waterman (28 July 2008)
Audience response
“I can see insect eggs. There's menstruation, and death too... a little cloth doll.”
“The piece is very symbolic of life birth/death and all the threads of baggage in between.”
“It really reminds me of baking a cake.”
“It reminds me of fronds, and little insect eggs.”
“It’s a little voodoo doll...”
“The sound track is its little blood, that’s what I thought.”
Exhibition selected
2016
One Minute vol 3 collection of artists’ moving image curated by Kerry Baldry:
Light Night Liverpool 2016 Liverpool Small Cinema; Night Sounding, Project, Yessling, Flora, Twenty Foot Square, and Verge: Nocturne also screened (13 May 2016, 5pm to 11pm)
2015
One Minute vol 3 collection of artists’ moving image curated by Kerry Baldry:
One Minute Hull Artists’ Moving Image Festival, Museum of Club Culture, Hull (7 November 2015, 10am to 4pm)
2014
Making Tracks Retrospective presented by Whirlygig Cinema, for the 11th London Short Film Festival, with the new score created and performed by the Cabinet of Living Cinema in 2011; Rich Mix, Shoreditch, London (11 January 2014)
2013
One Minute collection (volumes 1 to 6) exhibition at 20 to 21 Visual Arts Centre, Scunthorpe (19 July 2013, volume 3 on continuous play 10am to 4pm)
A State of Un-Play exhibition exploring games, rules, rituals, and philosophic investigations, curated by Diana Ali, Atelier 35, Strada Selari, Bucharest, Romania (15 to 28 July 2013)
One Minute collection (volumes 1-6) exhibition at Furtherfield Gallery, Finsbury Park, London (25 and 26 January 2013, volume 3 on continuous play 12pm to 4pm)2012
A Voyage through Animation presented by Whirlygig Cinema, with a new score created and played live at the screening by the Cabinet of Living Cinema; The Yard Theatre, Hackney Wick, London; part of the Scala Beyond season (16 September 2012)
One Minute exhibition at Redfern Warehouse, 13 Gibbons Street, Redfern, Australia. One Minute collections volumes 3, 4 and 5 presented by Virginia Hilyard and Peloton Gallery, including the films Verge: Nocturne, Twenty Foot Square and Flora (4 to 26 April 2012)
2011
One Minute exhibition at Peloton Gallery, Sydney, Australia. Featured the One Minute collections volumes 3, 4 and 5, including the films Verge: Nocturne, Twenty Foot Square and Flora (24 November to 17 December 2011)
HerStory exhibition, curated and presented by Women’s Work on the theme narratives of women’s lives; the Link Gallery, University of Winchester (8 June to 8 July 2011). The film White Body was screened during the private view on Wednesday 8 June, but not shown in the exhibition. Women’s Work apologised for this, but the policy of the University of Winchester is that - because the gallery is used for wedding receptions - work on public display should be ‘suitable for a family audience’. White Body is included on the DVD of the exhibition produced by Women’s Work.
Plymouth University Festival of Research: Materiality and Technology film programme presented by the Centre for Media Art and Design Research (MADr), Jill Craigie Cinema, Plymouth University. Other films shown are: Glass, Heirloom, and Verge 360 documentation (14 March 2011)
Crafty Animators exhibition, Thelma Hulbert Gallery Honiton, Devon; Animated Exeter Festival. Other films shown are Heirloom, and Sunset Strip (15 January to 5 March 2011)
Making Tracks presented by Whirlygig Cinema, with a new score created and played live at the screening by the Cabinet of Living Cinema:
Wychwood Festival, Cheltenham (3 June 2011)
Making Tracks at Rich Mix, Shoreditch, London (20 May 2011)
8th London Short Film Festival Live Event, Rich Mix, Shoreditch, London. A special programme presented by Whirlgig Cinema, featuring short artists' films from the London Short Film Festival that have featured in its Making Tracks programme (14 January 2011) Watch White Body rescored by the Cabinet of Living Cinema.
2010
Abertoir Horror Film Festival Short Film programme, Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, Cymru, UK (13 and 14 November 2010)
Visions in the Nunnery 2010 exhibition London, UK (2 to 17 October 2010)
The Women’s Art Show 2010 exhibition Fairfields Art Centre, Basingstoke, UK (26 February to 1 April 2010)
London Short Film Festival Femmes Fantastique programme, Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London, UK (9 January 2010)
One Minute vol 3 collection of artists’ moving image curated by Kerry Baldry:
GLIMMER Hull Film Festival closing party, UK (25 April 2010)
Purescreen#24 at Castlefield Gallery, Manchester, UK (25 March 2010)
The BAck doOR, Melbourne, Australia. Presented by cogcollective in conjunction with suek-artist (27 February 2010)
Art in Unusual Places: "The best in contemporary and experimental animation, film and video artists from across the world" presented by Lumen in the entrance and first floor cinema at the Merrion Centre, Leeds, UK (launch 3 December, screening throughout December and January to 14 January 2010)
2009
One Minute vol 3 collection of artists’ moving image curated by Kerry Baldry:
Art in Unusual Places, "a snapshot of some of the exciting work being produced by UK artists", presented by Lumen in the entrance and first floor cinema at the Merrion Centre, Leeds, UK (launch 3 December, screening throughout December and January to 14 January 2010)
Foyer Gallery, Hull School of Art and Design, UK (26 October to 12 November 2009, 9am to 5pm; preview 26 October 5pm to 7pm)
PRISM at Bank St Arts, Sheffield, UK (23 October 2009 from 8pm)
Half an Hour from Paradise Marseille Project Gallery, France (19 to 26 September 2009)
All UK Big Screens (27 July to 2 August 2009)
Hull Big Screen, UK (1 June to 31 July 2009)
Contemporary Art Ruhr C.A.R. 09, Essen, Germany, presented by Directors Lounge (Berlin) (5 to 7 June 2009)
The Apollo Opening Night, Herne Hill, London, UK (premiere, 4 June 2009)
2008
Immersion Scott Building, Plymouth University. White Body film projected as a loop (silent) onto the gallery floor, with the clay figure enlarged to approximately human scale. Part of the Locate group exhibition, in association with the Land/Water and the Visual Arts research group annual summer symposium Landscape and Beauty. (26 June to 1 July 2008)