If I could take me from that room, I would never give me back (2024)
3-Channel Video, extension cords, power strips, fishing line, lightbulbs, medical tape
Utah Museum of Contemporary Art
July 5 - October 19, 2024
Video, Sculpture, Concept: Kym McDaniel
Design & Production Assistance: Dusty Prebble
Technical Assistance: Jeff Griffin
Influenced by her research in Crip Theory (an interdisciplinary field that connects Disability Studies and Queer Theory) as well as her embodiment as a disabled dancer, artist Kym McDaniel uses performance and moving images to question how bodies, objects, and technologies are traditionally used.
Over the last ten years, McDaniel’s work has focused on the aftermath of trauma and somatic survival, largely through screen-based practices. “If I could take me from that room…” is a departure in terms of methodology and psychological inquiry. Resisting “memory recall” (recalling a traumatic memory in order to reclaim the event), she instead uses kinetic sculpture and video as portals to alter time and heal.
The 3-channel video leading viewers into the space uses thermal printed images, a photographic technique where images are printed with heat and fade after exposure to light and time. McDaniel transferred the thermal images to digital video, then burned the video onto VHS tapes. The VHS tapes will play and rewind continuously throughout the duration of the exhibit. The process mirrors the surprising, improvisational, and endurance-based work involved in trauma recovery. Scrolling text in the video invites both the artist and audience to envision a “different future”.
Inside the exhibit, salvaged extension cords and power strips form a neuronal structure that branches, twists, and grows from a center source. The recycled cords act as a metaphor for a body in a continuous state of transformation, with varying "uses" depending on its environment. Additionally, the cords represent the artist’s dedication and interest in ecoperformative sustainability practices.
Suspended from the ceiling, the cords become tangled neurons, limbs stretching, or plants heliotropically reaching for the sun. The structure references enmeshment and anarchy, and the cords connect back to one power strip which acts as a body of knowledge, information - and ultimately - power.
This installation was premiered at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, July 5 - October 19, 2024. Please visit Utah Museum of Contemporary Art link. Thank you Cecelia Condit, B Charles, Dusty Prebble, Merel Noorlander, Sammy Cunningham, Missy Weeks, Abbey Young, Michael Callahan, Hannah Hamalian, Isaac Brooks, Steven Chodoriwsky, & J MSA.
