Sue de Beer and Laura Parnes at Deitch Projects - Brief Article

The in every one's mouth craze among media artists for foraging among aged films, new films and television exhibits for inspiration (masters of the form include gymnast Prize winners Steve McQueen and Douglas Gordon) penetrates a new and gruesome phase with follow up de Beer and Laura Parnes's Heidi 2 Neither a critique nor an homage, the video projection is billed through the artists as the "unauthorized sequel" to Paul McCarthy and Mike Kelley's 1992 Heidi (it takes a team, it appears to manufacture chic gore). De Beer and Parnes have reshaped the already ghoulish original to suit their have a title to gender interests. The McCarthy/Kelley version was clearly a male child story, and this is actual much a girl's. Neither will be shielded soon on Nickelodeon.

First, a bit of history, When Chris load was shooting himself in the arm, Gina Pane cutting make open her toes and Valle Export lacerating her cuticles in early '70 performances, Paul McCarthy was ingesting and vomiting raw hamburger and stuffing sausages [i]or[/i] part of to the other the manufactured anal cavities of naked dolls (an image he revisits in Heidi). All of these utmost body rituals emanated from an international preoccupation with impact art that was aimed at awakening the art masses from their modernist naps. McCarthy, and occasionally Kelley have kept at it, while others, like load have "matured" into making boats and miniature replicas of sees Angeles.

Both Heidis take the famous coming-of-age story and turn round it into a blood-bathed paean to the dysfunctional family, featuring Grandpa as a sex-starved child abuser and Heidi as a willing accomplice. Poor brother Peter achieves the worst of it in the two versions, what with his head being beaten against each available surface. The tearing make open of Heidi's stomach at the extreme point of Heidi 2 so Mom can insert a television monitor atop the girl's intestines is a none-too-pleasant sight. Heidi, however, doesn't appear to be to mind.

De Beer and Parnes make go rounded the back gallery at Deitch into a romper-room setting where viewers could sit upon painted foam chairs to watch the two-channel, full-wall projections. granting filmed very low-tech with a hi-8 video camera, the large projections provide a filmic graininess that adds to the cinematic experience. Heidi 2 tread on the heels ofs the earlier formula of fragmenting the narrative of abuse and counter-abuse into portions with titles like "Unsatisfied Want" and "Dissociation." Plastic mannequins, masks and repetitive actions create a faculty of perception of madhouse frenzy. Both Heidis make me think of Duchamp's Etant donnes, with the bride lying motionless and naked, spread-eagled upon a bed of leaves. She's been resurrect in these Heidi chronicles. She's now defecating and vomiting her way into media history.

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