As it Lays
is a three-channel video installation that suspends the teen actress in the very unreality of the studio stage. In the central channel a group of girls take turns performing scenes from Joan Didion’s Novel, Play it As it Lays. In the other two channels they multiply a visual reference to infamous moments from Hitchcock’s Psycho and Vertigo. The scenes are constructed through slow reveals of a field of stagnant too-young actresses performing iconic death poses—disarming the viewer with their subtle breath.
Their physical presence confuses the performamce of an adult femininity and points at their own not yet being women. The construction of their identity is in process and affected by the intake of specifically codified images of ideality in popular culture. And like young women performing said ideal, they are splayed for the camera like pinned butterflies, but here the performance of the role in awkward conflict with the realness of themselves.