Still

This two-channel video installation, Still: Re-Posing Lady Brute (for the duration of Kate Craig’s ‘Skins’, 60 mins 33 sec), investigates processes of re-enactment by focusing on the relationship between documentation, live performance and the desire to inhabit the gaze of the past. The work attempts to de-stabilize notions of coherent identity and creative authorship by animating the perspective of both the photographed subject and the active eye behind the camera. The videos reference the iconic Rodney Werden photograph of the late Vancouver performance artist Kate Craig posing as her artistic persona Lady Brute (as depicted on the cover of File Magazine Vol. 2 No. 4, 1973) and a series of Craig’s intimate video works (such as Skins from 1975) that experiment with abstraction, perspective and the frame of the camera. Milton’s response to Craig’s work is both an homage to the rich history of feminist performance in Vancouver as well as a critical examination of the relationship between photography, portraiture and immortalization.