Video Art: Ordinary Affects

“Ordinary affect is a surging, a rubbing, a connection of some kind that has an impact.. it gestures not toward the clarity of answers but toward the texture of knowing.” -Kathleen Stewart 

How do we tap into the space beneath the ordinary? Can we sit in the fragments of experience that tug at us before we know how to define them? Are there aspects of being which are not meant to be integrated into our framework of knowing? This affective charge is what Kathleen Stewart calls a “still life” - when you find yourself outside of the narrative you created for yourself.. where ideas of agency, home, and life are not the center of experience - like a step out of time into perhaps sheer pleasure or malice…

We live in an increasingly homogenous world, where “ordinary” creates a range of possibilities and restrictions we base our perspectives on. This is not a clear thing that can be defined. It’s the everyday association we have to things - the beliefs and stories and inheritances of our time. What do we pay attention to? What have we become addicted to as a means of creating purpose? How are we building expectations and what happens when it turns out different than we thought?

We are surrounded by mass desire - shared public fantasies offering answers and commodities packaged as the main stream. Images we can plug into to feel a part of something without being involved. A narrative where life is seamless and fixed through hard work and commitment to following the right steps.

I’m curious what is born from bodies in interaction - moving between literal bodies and bodies of thought. And how this is reflected in objects and the environment around us. There is a way power plays between things. The subtleties of it. And how we participate as a result.

This video evolves out of a stream of consciousness conversation layering performance and installation. I invite people into the vulnerability of process - where structures are assembled and dispersed into fragmented, contradictory, and multiple meanings.

Artist & Editor: Alexa Eisner
Cinematographer: Andy Hoffman
Sound Designer: Cochrane McMillan
Words by: Kathleen Stewart, Patti Smith