Adventures in Assimilation, Dean Moss, 1992
A 1992 single channel work was my first video dance project. I shot it alone in my bedroom on a vhs camera with auto-focus, and edited on two super-vhs decks. The movement was spontaneous and to completely different music then the finished work. The originally white boarder/mask was conceived to have social implications as were the jeans and grass skirt costume. It was sort of my ambivalent take on didactic affirmative identity performances that were popular at the time: though I’m not so sure it reads as such. What I continue to like about it is the purposeful flat, graphic quality of the video, its framing, and the impact of negative space on the accumulation of meaning. The work received a Jury Award from the New York Festival of Short Film and Video.
-Artist’s Statement
