Statement for "Self Portrait in Snow Canyon"

The film is a portrait of the self split in two. There is potentially a series of symbolic inversions the duality could represent : real/ imaginary, conscious/ unconscious, mind/heart, a reflective twinning, an oscillation between the two. A double self portrait insinuates ironic self awareness like Baudelaire’s dédoublement.

The two women are connected by a cord and move closer and closer together throughout the film’s duration; there is a symmetry between them. The situation borrows from theory of quantum reality, where they are inextricably connected into some indivisible whole, when one does something the other is affected simultaneously.

The sound conveys, or reiterates, the internal aspect and the desert landscape presents its own trajectory and historical symbolism. Historically, the desert is featured predominantly in spiritual mysticism, signifying the difficult situation of the people; with this interpretation the women’s actions appear ritualistic. And yet this type of landscape has strong ties to the cinematic like the American Western. I consider it to signify the landscape of the mind; that these dance like gestures are being performed by the two women in a way that is trying to understand something, remember maybe, perhaps that inextricable connection itself.

View the film http://www.vimeo.com/4411818