New Age Kitsch Takes Us a Level Higher
When zapping through channels on late-night
TV, do you ever wonder who orders all the products, self-help books and medical devices that smiling
presenters demonstrate and discuss for hours on end? The main character of artist
Shana
Moulton’s color-saturated video series
Whispering Pines would be a likely
candidate. Cynthia is a sad and solitary woman - played by Moulton - who wears clothing with bizarre
built-in medical devices. Despite the rainbow colors of her home furnishings and the magical properties
of the gadgets that surround her, she somehow just can’t seem to get out of her rut. For example, in
Whispering Pines 2, Cynthia wears a bizarre hemorrhoid pillow dress and searches
for inspiration and magic in her home decor, which is animated with low-tech effects. In the later episode
Feeling Free an odd brace prevents her from doing the physical exercises on an
Angela Lansbury health and beauty video, while objects from her household mysteriously appear on TV
as she is watching. Finally, in the 3D
Magic Eye Poster Finale, Cynthia climbs
into the glittery world of a 3-D Pegasus poster to dance and rave with Lansbury and other creatures.
While
Moulton’s film may initially seem to be about the hollowness of the technicolor world of merchandising,
it is actually the dream-catchers, glowing stones and pyramid-like objects that guide Cynthia into a
world of tacky but ecstatic New Age nirvana. A rainbow, retro esthetic sets the tone and evokes memories
of girlie toys, 1980s neons and 1990s glitter. Moulton’s combination of these elements and the quirky
persona of Cynthia turn the formerly banal into the bizarre. Both funny and pleasingly strange,
Whispering
Pines is about sadness and transformation, the story of a lonely character’s desire to find the
transcendental in the treasure hunt of the ordinary. As Moulton describes, “
Whispering
Pines is not meant to be purely critical - it is also celebratory. I find a lot of magic in the
most mass-produced, low-brow, bad taste items, and I focus on these items over and over because they
are more interesting to me than a lot of art.”
A performance and video
artist, Moulton is currently based in New York.
Whispering Pines
is available through Electronic Arts Intermix.
Links:www.shanamoulton.comwww.eai.org/eai/artist.jsp?artistID=10320
