Keeping

Description:

While in residence at Western Front, Anne Seagrave produced the single-channel video performance Keeping. The work was inspired by the False Face Society, the best known of several curing societies among the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) of the lower Great Lakes, which play vital roles in religious practice and in sustaining community health and wellness. Members were initiated through visionary encounters, and the masks used in rituals were understood as portraits of mythological beings whose assistance was invoked.

In the video, Seagrave is seen seated on a tall, fabric-draped plinth that visually merges with the backdrop and her clothing. As she moves through various physical gestures, her body becomes a projection surface for animal heads, producing a chimeric human–animal form. The work is filmed from a low perspective that disorients her bodily orientation and evokes the horizontality of dreaming. 

Keeping features a flute soundtrack by R. Carlos Nakai.

Video documentation is available upon request.