Descending Odalisque
Super8 film transferred to DV
2:59 minutes
silent
2000-2004
The title of this work refers to the famous painting titled “Nude Descending the Staircase” by Marcel Duchamp. The video begins with “The Lead” in which a cat and a female onlooker casually view each other back and forth. “The Descent” depicts another kind of interaction between the woman and the cat. A whirlwind of images pass over the screen as a clock in the background counts down two minutes backward. The whirl of images suggests a chase, or descent in a stairwell, as stairs and windows are present as distinctive imagery. The work also suggests a psychological descent as abstract and undecipherable imagery create an interplay between the recognizable and unrecognizable.