Katie Wood, Chicago sound artist, completed her master’s degree this year in Experimental Sound from School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She posted a video-essay piece, “Running Water (a work in progress)” last month, and I take it to be a culminating statement that incorporates the breadth of her collegiate exploration, going all the way back to undergraduate years at The College of William & Mary. While there, Katie began studying Environmental Science, and ended with a decided interest in Performance Art. In “Running Water,” Katie relates her experiences of discovery and wonder at human behavior to the behavior of water. Her piece ends with a threshold question about sound. I expect that she plans to probe the possibilities of its value to humans and other living creatures in her future work. Because sound is more ephemeral than water, and not so necessary to life, she wonders whether it is possible for sound to make a home, or at least, how much of a home does it make? This short video overlaps an academic register and poetic registers of time and touch to convey a hopeful young person’s self-conscious awareness of the past and future.
Laughter, banjo, grass footsteps and fake animal calls. A gray screen. Totally familiar to me. A voice is counting off statements. Number zero is a reference to a study on human concepts based on straight lines and the problem they pose to human identity and queerness. Katie depicts youthful behavior in contrast with the ideal of a straight line. She states that and her friends don’t yearn for the structure of a single dwelling. They decide to dwell places on a daily basis and aren’t habitually telling each other what or why or where. She calls this behavior fluid and celebrates the way it resembles the soft, suppleness of her skin and what’s flowing underneath. Skin is visually compared to a young leaf. The video appeals to the intimate senses of touch and hearing with a blind opening where the gentle crunch of thick, overgrown grass places the viewer in a wild area. The blind opening makes the viewer vulnerable. In “Running Water,” on an intimate, day-to-day level, a person finding a place to sleep is guided by sensitivity to nature and physical self-awareness, and finds theirself in an unplanned, yet necessary dwelling. Though Katie portrays the beauty of youthful individuality, she also describes the experience of feeling lost. The reflective, analytical voice counting off ideas, making a number line, strikes opposition with the depicted wandering beauty. Time and memory are personal in this piece, but also cultural and geological. As “Running Water” develops along its numbered essay-points, Katie describes the seasonal movements of Monacan Indians along her native river in Virginia. She strikes a contrast between their movement, necessitated by the changing seasons and her own, which she says is governed by the economy. Images flash in silence. First, a map of a city plan with water pipes and then, an aerial view of a dark, green wooded mountain terrain. Tension between the straight line and a tendency to wander are part of our human relationship to water. She says she owns land and acknowledges that a creek on her property may wander off it in years to come when she may return to it. For now, it is wild. This beginning of the video prodded at my own self-consciousness. Sometimes I feel I’m off task or off course. There is a strength to Katie’s portrayal of wandering youth. The camera style is spontaneous and informal- a cell phone stunt video shot from the hip. A subject- a peer- climbs on an open door to get in a window, and then both friends howl with joy. The essay reflects that these friends don’t communicate about the fundamental place of dwelling. They seem to be relishing their vitality and spontaneity. This clip is juxtaposed with images of purposeful insects -- a spider making a web, or bees building a hive. The film discusses the way young people can feel lost sometimes, but calls our behavior “a privilege, a superpower.” I think the privilege and superpower Katie talks about is our self-awareness. Katie takes a humanistic point of view. The fluid behavior of her and her friends is beautiful, like their skin, and like the water flowing underneath it. She celebrates the self-discovery occurring in the video, and its closeness with nature. The image of the friend climbing is half the old house and half an overgrown wood. The door and window are both open upon approach. Then the speaker describes rivers that, like our curving bodies in motion, don’t cut a straight path, but tend to meander. The speaker claims that river becomes more of itself when it meanders. Like Alice-in-Wonderland, who seeks within herself a certain muchness, although she can’t satisfactorily describe what it is, she is compelled on a journey, and so the substance of the river is elusive, comprising a whole wandering journey. Sometimes our vocalizations are an attempt to describe ourselves in broadening self-awareness, and sometimes we express ourselves with a cry of pride when we are goofing off. Even when we feel lost, it would seem we are gathering strength, and growing. In terms of Katie’s academic journey, the video, “Running Water,” is enriched by her studies in sound and performance. A performance is unyielding. The speaker plants herself on her butt in the rocks and throws blue antlers in a shallow creek-bed. The antlers are painted blue, a color said to be designated for the depiction and celebration of water. The speaker says people assign the color to water, but like a blue map line that won’t reflect the shape of the river as it changes, so the water’s color changes based on its container. The antlers, painted in a precious blue color, curve smoothly, but they are also hard. They are tossed near the water but don’t flow away. They are hung up on the rocks, and land randomly, sometimes all tangled together. The performance challenges the viewers expectations about purpose and order. Stark sounds in the piece – a striking tone and contrasting silence, accompany the blunt presentation of a decisive quote or a still image of a forest. In these quiet moments, like in the performance, the viewer has time to insert their own reflections. The counting essay proceeds with even, purposeful, decision. “Running Water” is enriched by Katie’s scholastic wandering. For her first year-and-a-half of college, she thought she was going to be an Environmental Science major. I remember she was really worried about pursuing art instead, because she felt like it wasn’t as sure of a path to success, but in the end, she followed her strong inclination. Sometimes, when we are following an academic path, we have questions to ask ourselves, and our own self- awareness and can be painful as we try to figure out where we should go, and how we should get there. One of my favorite poems, “Lines Composed a Few Miles above Tintern Abbey, On Revisiting the Banks of the Wye during a Tour. July 13, 1798,” by William Wordsworth, is an autobiographical, free-verse poem that recounts self-reflective experiences in adulthood that overcome the adult speaker when he lies down by himself to sleep. The speaker feels Sensations sweet, Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart; And passing even into my purer mind With tranquil restoration… (Tintern Abbey, Stanza II) At times when he is mid the din of towns and cities, Wordsworth’s experiences in nature as a child transformed into feelings that helped him go to sleep. As poet laureate of England during the Romantic period of literature, Wordsworth struggled with witnessing some of the ill effects of industrialization on society and nature, and felt more at home, and closer to an idealistic past on the banks of the Wye River. In times of great hardship and turmoil, the motion of memory flowed through him like water and soothed him. “Running Water” also begins in a natural setting that is over-layered with a voice acknowledging the great, not-yet-realized value of such experiences. Wordsworth shows how the experiences return in the same form- sensations that are intimate and not spoken. Wordsworth’s poem also discusses the way these feelings are shared between individuals. As an older man, he observes his sister’s relationship with nature. Her youth inspires him, because he believes he used to be like her, but that he has changed. He hopes she experiences the same feelings that memories bring to him when she grows older. He wishes Thy memory be as a dwelling-place For all sweet sounds and harmonies… (Tintern Abbey, Stanza V) Wordsworth shows how certain experiences are designated for youth and mellowed in future years. “Running Water” video subjects share experiences guided by their own sensations and the video celebrates the discoveries that take place when the doors are left open and the people wander without a vocal sense of shared purpose. Images of wider society, and wider views of the forest suggest that the subjects’ behavior has a relationship to a wider world, even when the subjects are experiencing individual growth. The subjects are observed by a voice of remembrance, and analysis. I enjoyed Katie’s harmonious video-essay on “queer space, sanctioned trespasses, people making animal sounds, and belonging in liminal spaces.” I enjoyed the way Katie pieced together experiences from her academic and social life and congratulated those who might feel lost on a wandering path. She shows why water can soothe and strengthen us when we feel self-conscious. Her videography elicits a response as sensitive as its content, and she wants to continue to enrich this “work in progress” by continuing her studies in sound. To view Katie's current work, go to: https://ess.org/alba-residency
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AuthorWe are Kieran and Michelle, two 32-year-old William & Mary grads living in Virginia. Archives
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