m u l c h  b e a t, 2018

Highly influenced by and as a reply to Maya Deren's 'Meshes of the Afternoon' (1943), 'Mulch Beat' is a demo video depicting a schism or ruptured experience operating as a catalyst for self-curing the physical and psychological effects of inertia and stagnation. 

The layering of phone quality archival footage depicts personal histories, both of significance and insignificance, in order to create a cinematic compost, or mulch.

Mulch acts a methodology for the protagonist to entangle themselves in, in order to work through the complexities of existence in the current neo-Capitalist epoch. To counter hegemonic narratives eluding to Capitalist consummations of progress, productivity and success, domestic interiors are used as backdrops and sets. 

 

The video utilises a ceremonial imagery; the protagonist is veiled in a blue-screen hood, (like a green screen, but blue) and objects such as dried flowers can be as integral to the passage of the video as their human counterpart is. 

 

Speaking words and kneeling before the camera, as if the eye of the camera and therefore the eye of the audience is judging, both the artist and protagonist use a research-based creative practice as a toolkit to become open-minded to chance encounters that counter personal inertia, making this video a confessional apparatus. Performing kinship with landscape, reading aloud written mantras, cameo-ing John Logie Baird, finding tranquillity with rapid water: the rhythm of 'Mulch Beat' is imbued with triggers and cues that could enmesh protagonist and audience together in an uncanny and open state, an openness similar to that within ritualistic encounters.

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