This is a seal skin dress. Put away your adopted social morals and enjoy it.
This piece incorporated the use of double pleating to create a corner on a pleat. The hood joins only at the bust and back neckline. The pleats at the sides undo to let the wearer in. the fox fur is split down the centre of the tail to remove the bone, and that is where the seam originates. the graphic front of the lower half came from having to piece it together so there was enough.
Death1000000BC is Dual channel video loop by Rebecca Moran. Rebecca engaged me to create for her past life self a costume.
“….You are 13? And a predator gets you?”
Yah
“What kind of animal comes to mind?”
A bear. Here.
“it hits you there and that is fatale?”
Yah.
“Where you running away from that bear?”
No
“Did you face it when it happens?”
Yah
“With other people you were hunting that bear?”
Yah.
“And that hunt, was it your first hunt? This girl you were, did you realize the bear killed you?”
Yes.
“Did you have peace with that?”
Yah…(pause) It’s cold
“Is that the coldness of death?”
No.
“It was cold before the bear?”
Yes.
“And do you still have a spiritual connection to this bear?”
Uh-huh
“Whenever people are killed by an animal there is a special spiritual connection that bonds. And does your mind or part of you go to that bear when it kills you?”
Yah
“And was the bear killed?”
Uh-huh
“Do you experience that? And do you realize it is not you that is killed?”
Yes.
“Is it the claw in your chest that you feel still?”
Yes. The ijs bear is here.
Excerpt from statement by Rebecca:
My current project developed from an investigation into the concept of dream realities, ideas of parallel existence, and theories of reincarnation. It is a query into our perception of what constitutes being and death, and how we might participate in creating our own idea of self in time. ‘Death Sequence’ (Death200ad, Death1937, Death100,000bc) is a series of video’s based on memories of past lives retrieved using hypnosis and trance with the supervision of a professional regression guide. And what is revealed through all the re-experience collapsed in one moment? Something as complex as questioning where we are situated in time, and as simple as the realization: “I sure am dying a lot.”
For this piece Rebecca needed a costume for a 12 year old girl she once was in Greenland somewhere around 1,000,000 BC.
I told her that she was going to need some old-school.
In the installation film the girl wanders out into the ice fields to hunt a bear herself. She is surprisingly unsuccessful.
Rebecca is not a 12 year old girl. she is a bit more than that. so to make Rebecca very simply much younger I suggested the use of pinafore symbolics and strapping.
And to make it as contextual as possible we hunted and killed five adolescent seals, and severed the tails of two snow foxes. They were unimpressed.
We made the costume [see process], Rebecca went to Greenland, lived with dogs dried fish and snow, filmed as much as she wanted and is on the way back to Reykjavik to edit.
The main focus of my work is on subjective perceptions of reality. I am primarily interested in the idea of truth, questioning the basis of what is real. Within this theme, I explore the concepts of time and linearity and how people relate to the world of experience. Travel and exploration of cultures and varying belief system is a core element in my process. The work is characterized by the contrasting innocent/playful humor with an ominous undertone.
Bio:
In the last 29 years, Rebecca has considered being a gymnast, a physicist, a detective, an astronaut, an underwater amphibian, an Eskimo, and a rock n roll drummer. Ten years ago, she realized making choices is irrelevant and enrolled in University at the Art Institute of Chicago. Since then, a few more notions have been added to the list of aspirations. Some stick and some pass away. What stays is the continual question of what does it mean to be something? What is being? And what is death?
After leaving Chicago in 2001, Rebecca picked a point on the map where she had never been and ended in Rotterdam Holland for 5 years. Then something happened or nothing at all. In 2005, the urge to explore new terrain ended with a warm apartment in the deep of Reykjavik's Icelandic winter. Perhaps it was movement towards her call of the Eskimo, or a simple love affair with the mountain Esrya. With her camera, tripod, and a bit of dried fish, she will continue her work and keep asking questions until the call is answered. Or until the past becomes present.
