As a recursive, never completed practice of genre subversion, the work belongs somewhere in the middle, in the void, in the failed attempt to pin down some objective reality. The video was collaborative, improvised and completed in one take. I provided performers with costumes, a location and a prompt. A couple lives in a haunted house and is visited by a priest who attempts to exorcise the home. We subjected cliches to reality and saw what happens when real people do their best to negotiate an unfamiliar circumstance. The house played an important role as it represented an iconic cliche and a part of the colonial imaginary. Researching the house I learned that, although built in the 18th century, it had been renovated to look more modern, then stripped again, in later years, to look original. However its lost original furnishings were replaced with fake and decontextualized period objects. The house itself became the exercise in memory I attempted to tell through the story. An eternal recurrence, a recycling of memory with no end or definite beginning and no concrete reality.
LANGUAGE : English COUNTRY : USA YEAR : 2024 DURATION : 13m DIRECTOR / WRITER : Holly Rae Harrell PRIEST : Noah Pica GHOST : Res Julian MAN : Trae Story WOMAN : Hannah Doucet
Director statement : I examine American mythologies, from the practices and techniques involved in storytelling to purchasing bulk ketchup to save money. Through storytelling and genre subversion, my work reimagines how American mythologies reflect processes of memory, misremembering and contested histories. By layering real historical sites, fantasy narratives, and autobiographical elements, I aim to bridge the gap between our reality as we remember it and the reality we are told.
Bio : I am a Los Angeles based artist originally from upstate New York. I completed my MFA at the California Institute of the Arts in 2020 and hold a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. I have performed and participated in screenings throughout New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and internationally. In Los Angeles I’ve performed and exhibited at MAK Center for Art and Architecture, Cirrus Gallery, Human Resources, Los Angeles Contemporary Archive, Anat Ebgi Gallery and Sebastian Gladstone Gallery as well as various project spaces. I received the REEF Residency and Grant with a collaborator in 2020 where we used our awarded funds to develop a research journal with the Los Angeles Contemporary Archive. In 2024 I attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. I wrote and am directing The Time Off Their Life, with my collaborator, a forthcoming performance project at Charlotte Call Gallery.
Pebbles Underground is focused on showcasing and promoting experimental, avant-garde, underground, and no-to-low budget projects by artist-humans from all over the world. Absurd, uncanny, witty, humorous, slow-video – all are welcomed, and loved.
Pebbles Underground is an independent project not funded by any government or corporation, and we intend to keep it that way. Main source of funding is personal donations from humans organizing the project, who are artists themselves, and the main drive of the project is formed by the energy and involvement of the organizers, and the public.
