'The Quickening'

On Wednesday, Grammie came (oh how fun it is to call your Mom, Grammie) and I went to Chelsea to pop in a few galleries. I went to see 'The Quickening'. Why might you ask would I like to spend my time away from my little boy watching women get stalked and killed is a question that I can not answer but it was so much more then that. I really enjoyed the filming, technique, and narrative. I admit I am a sucker for the costuming and sets and the fairy tale aspect of the scarlet dress girl sweeping the leaves in the forest and dancing with the bear. This stems to my obsessions with the forest, forest creatures...


Here is a press release

Sue de Beer
Marianne Boesky Gallery
509 W 24th St
Marianne Boesky Gallery is pleased to announce a new video installation by Sue de Beer, entitled The Quickening. Set in the oppressive environment of Puritan New England ca. 1740 and drawing inspiration from the Salem Witch Trials, the novels of Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the Decadent writings of Joris-Karl Huysmans, de Beer has created a period film filtered through the gaze of a psychedelic lens. The video will be projected in the main gallery space, amongst a dropped ceiling, lush lighting and red carpeting. Typical of de Beer’s video practice, the artist replicates portions of the sets in The Quickening to accompany the screening. Before entering the projection room, the viewer must first pass through a ring of trees, 10 feet in diameter. Next, a hallway with two replicated dream machines entices the viewer towards the main gallery space. Integral to the film itself, the spinning dream machines with their mesmerizing flickering light prepare the viewer to be transported and deliver him ready to engage with the film.

With The Quickening, Sue de Beer distances herself from her past fascination with the world of today’s youth, so characteristic of her previous videos. Instead, 18th century Puritan America becomes de Beer’s physical stage and inspires a wholly different culture to be mined. The Quickening’s themes naturally involve female sexuality and its repression, sin, fear and ultimate persecution. The narrative is seemingly simple enough: a young woman is stalked, violently attacked, and finally hanged as punishment for her immorality. Recalling her past slasher-movie aesthetic, De Beer heightens the violence with frenetic camera movements and crystalline audio of knife to flesh, yet counters its dark shadows with rich jewel-toned greens and scarlets in its sets and costumes.

Layered upon the themes of sins of the flesh and their punishment, de Beer weaves another character into the video who sits entranced watching a dream machine before him, leaving the viewer to wonder where the reality of the narrative lies. Where Puritanism sought control over the members of its society and their inherent sin, which de Beer highlights through a voiceover with excerpts from the theologian Jonathan Edwards’ richly didactic sermon Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God (1741), the dream machine provides the very release from that control, freeing the mind from such constraints.