“I’m completely convinced that I’m almost a diabetic, even though I’m really careful,” says video artist Shana Moulton, who as an undergrad once did a performance where she covered her face with a caramel mask, waited for it to dry, peeled it away and ate the entire mask. Then she washed everything off in a basin filled with white sugar. “I was almost puking,” she says, and explains how at the time, she’d just learned her parents had Type 2 diabetes. So her self-professed hypochondria isn’t completely unfounded. In Moulton’s ongoing video series, Whispering Pines, she plays a character named Cynthia, an alter ego who is plagued with a variety of illnesses, perhaps more imagined than real. She’s constantly looking for a cure, or some kind of answer to all her problems. Cynthia tries everything from beauty products promising miracles, to water fountains spouting New Age energy speak, to an Avon lady hand healer. It’s these illnesses and the subsequent remedies that are the catalyst for Cynthia’s fantastic, escapist adventures through the looking glass. Whether Cynthia actually finds liberation - or salvation - is unclear, and the video’s low-tech aesthetic and over-the-top citric acid color scheme make the viewer feel a little loopy, as though you’ve just stayed up all night, bleary-eyed, watching cable access infomercials for crystal-wielding psychic healers. Moulton grew up in Northern California, a hotbed of spiritual self-help and seekers of healthy alternative lifestyles, but she’s recently moved to Brooklyn. Her latest solo show, Sand Saga, is on view at Broadway 1602, 1182 Broadway Apt. 1602 (at 28th Street), closing this Saturday, Feburary 16. There’ll be a live performance by Moulton at 7pm.
[Pictured: Shana Moulton performing at the opening of Sand Saga on January 21, 2008. The above text is an excerpt from my forthcoming interview with Moulton in Amsterdam-based magazine Blend, available online next month....stay tuned!]
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