Dark Bride (1996)

Dark Bride (1996)

Typewriter, pedestal, silk, 80 slides, projector and dissolve unit, audiotape, motion sensor.

Dark Bride tells a story of mid-20th century repression, desire, and dubious expertise. Silk suspended through a typewriter trails to the floor in a bridal train cascade; activated by a viewer’s approach, projections of text and images, tell part of the story, while speakers hidden inside the typewriter tell the rest.

In this piece I conjured a 1940′s lesbian striving to find words for her unspeakable passions. The derogatory 20th century expertise she could by then read articulated not only her shame, but also a language for her existence. Caught in this tug of war, she struggles to type her own words, to frame her own desire, to become her own kind of bride. Conflict between desire and repression is organized into the chapters of a pulp novel with my character as the main protagonist.