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Young AmericansCollaboration with Fionn Meade, simpsonandmeade.com Currently on view at Seattle Art Museum Filmed primarily at the House of the Good Shepherd, a home for “orphaned and wayward girls” built in Seattle in 1907, the film project Young Americans (2009) alternates between pensive shots within the empty building, and frenetic, but cryptic passages of a group reenacting archaic games. Narrative clarity is withheld from the viewer but also from the actors as internal struggles for control of the rules and story line reflect society’s increasingly fractured and even combative interpretation of daily life. Both in the film and the roles we inhabit everyday, there exists a confusion about who are the actors and who are the acted upon. Young Americans finds a poetic visual analog to this condition, suggesting that, in a sense, we may all be orphaned and wayward. Directed, edited and filmed by Mary Simpson and Fionn Meade. Includes: Cat Clifford, Marc Dombrosky, Heide Heinrichs, Dave Lipe, Amelia Reeber |
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Black FlagsCollaboration with Fionn Meade, simpsonandmeade.com Black and white Super-8 film, silent, 2 minutes 37 seconds, 2009 A gestural telling of the parable of the prodigal son wherein the rift between brothers remains open. Simple declarations of difference and otherness propel the action, flirting with but ultimately avoiding the false resolve of comedy or melodrama. Directed, edited and filmed by Mary Simpson and Fionn Meade. Includes: Sami Ben Larbi, Tim Hyde |
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Tristesse RoyaleCollaboration with Fionn Meade, simpsonandmeade.com Beginning with an audition scenario, Tristesse Royale explores the dramatic tropes of public address and the rhetoric of resistance. Even as a speaker prepares to deliver a talk—in this case critic and curator Tirdad Zolghadr addressing “failure as backdrop and atmosphere”—he finds himself under the duress of gestural directives and off-camera requests. In the video’s second half, the speaker has been replaced and the scenario has been revised to include a restless, makeshift audience. Here, artist and writer Gareth James revives an 1803 speech given by Robert Emmet, Irish nationalist rebel leader, in attempting to rally and convince a stand-in assembly. Directed, edited and filmed by Mary Simpson and Fionn Meade. Includes: Gareth James, Tirdad Zolghadr, Daniel Bozhkov, Sami Ben Larbi, Michael Berryhill, Jason Boughton, Stephanie Costello, Rob Ebeltoft, Sam Ekwurtzel, Sean Patrick Farrell, Gene McHugh, Colin McMullen, Alyssa Pheobus, Amelia Saddington, Peter Mandradjieff, Sohrab Mohebbi, Lior Shvil, Rob Swainston, Johanna Von Den Driesch, Rona Yefman Excerpt Part 1 > |
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A Man Cut in Two by a WindowCollaboration with Fionn Meade, simpsonandmeade.com Part stands in for whole in this study of the fragmented body as surrealist equations arise from the collapse of setting and subject, mis-en-scène and gesture. Directed, edited and filmed by Mary Simpson and Fionn Meade. |
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WinterreiseCollaboration with Fionn Meade, simpsonandmeade.com A young woman rehearses the last song from Schubert’s Winterreise (“Winter’s Journey”) cycle, evoking a world-weary young man’s farewell. Inspired by soprano Lotte Lehman’s 1941 recording of Der Leiermann, this portrait of the performer emphasizes transitions in and out of character. The piece closes with three subtle variations, suspending the resolve of Schubert’s final composition. Directed, edited and filmed by Mary Simpson and Fionn Meade. Includes: Rachel Schutz, Gene McCugh |
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Billy in the LowgroundCollaboration with Fionn Meade, simpsonandmeade.com Billy in the Lowground (2007) brings together the ballad form with Structural film tactics—fixed camera positions, predetermined sequencing, and simplified action—to enter into the darker corners of American heritage. The murder ballad “Pretty Polly” is performed with a dispassionate intensity inherent to the form while a minimalist choreography attempts to articulate the gaps that exist between the verses of the song itself. Extended close-ups are interrupted by gestures that explore the “leaping and lingering” dynamic associated with the folk ballad form in which the telling of a story—slipping in and out of linear time, focusing on certain details and neglecting others—mirrors both memory’s acuity and lacunae. Directed, edited and filmed by Mary Simpson and Fionn Meade. Includes: The Foghorn Stringband (Brian Bagdonas, PT Grover Jr, Caleb Klauder, Sammy Lind, Kevin Sandri), Steve Barsotti, Dave Hanagan, Nate Lippens, Michael Meade, Alice de Muizon, Amelia Reeber, Sedat Uysal |
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PauseCollaboration with Fionn Meade, simpsonandmeade.com Departing from Samuel Beckett’s most common stage directive, Pause. depicts a non-place where the rhythm of a scuffle and the isolated steps of feet along a wall act as a metronome. The resulting “pause in motion” exists in between decisive action and rest, refusing caesura. |
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Zero to Nine: Only God Can Save Us NowCollaboration with Fionn Meade, simpsonandmeade.com A collage of romantic imagery depicting the violence of the American west—taken from popular etchings, broadsides, photographs, cartoons, and other materials—is catalogued alongside documents of land art performances from the late 1960s and 70s. |