Goldsmiths College, London

Peer Session 77 was guest-moderated by Lindsay Seers.

Katharine Fry showed “D.A.N.C.E.F.O.R.Y.O.U.R.D.A.D.D.Y.", a video projection designed to be screened level with the floor, and with audio played on wireless headphones. The work used a single camera angle to cut between footage of a female subject, positioned in a variety of poses in an attic space. The audio featured a female voice repeating the words “he's on his way, he's coming home. Shee-bop." The conversation began with a suggestion that the windowless attic room, black lace garments worn by the woman, and the stark use of short frames gave the work a sense of foreboding, reminding some viewers of horror films (The Blair Witch Project was mentioned). There was a lot of discussion about the title, and the sense of domestic hierarchy that this invoked, and whether the woman in the film was a (proposed) victim, or a sexually confident/dominant protagonist enticing an erotic encounter with the viewer.

Alia Pathan showed a work-in-progress (Untitled, 4 min) , designed to be projected on objects as part of an installation. The audio featured a female subject/voice speaking about revisiting the shrine of a distant relative in India. The discussion focussed on the differing roles of narrative and story-telling, and specifically on whether an autobiographical work need represent the author's “truth" - and indeed what that might actually mean. There was also conversation about the fragmentary nature of the elements of the work, and how the voice-over used narrative conventions to draw them together. The affective quality of the female voice as a means to provide coherence was also discussed.

Lindsay Seers is an internationally renowned artist and lecturer in Fine Art
www.lindsayseers.info

Katharine Fry is a video artist and current PhD student at Goldsmiths

Her work invites you into a world of unbearable images that insist as they seduce. Her current video series takes place in a domestic realm populated by women shut in attics, twisted under tables, spiralling round stairs or climbing walls. They blur between subject and object as they carry out perpetual tasks, whether perverted domestic duties of supporting furniture with their mouths or more Sisyphean tasks of regurgitating endless amounts of gravel. The context is one of enchantment as their bodies perform miraculous deeds without betraying a trace of fatigue.
katharineiswheeling.wordpress.com

Alia Pathan is a video and sound artist and musician
www.aliapathan.com