EAGE
(the first song was a love song)
2018 | 26.20 (loop) | 3840 pixels x 1080 pixels
What the world needs now is LOVE- but seriously - not the model of starry-eyed love we’ve allowed ourselves to hold up as our ideal. Hollywood and our inveterate romantic culture saddles us with an image of love that stretches all the way back to Eve and Adam, and forces us to search for our own Garden of Eden.
“EAEG” is a symphonic reboot of our concept of love, and how we represent it, in order to find for ourselves the joy of wanting to know someone better than we know ourselves; and of our need to tell ourselves this story. We are the only animals whose love demands telling.
As we celebrate the myth of romantic love we ignore the fact that our love is more fraught with insultingly mundane reality than we’d like to admit. The concept of love is revised by every generation but remains caught in some simple and unnatural misconceptions. “EAGE” embraces the power of love as it questions its future.
In many ways, this is the story of “the story of love”, but asking, “what is the story of love freed from sexism, slander, gender, race, guilt and deceit?” “EAGE” suggests alternative and amusing options to our Day-Glo attitude to love narrated by performers and leaders of the eco-sexual movement, Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle, with a mash-up of amorous pop music, orchestrated and aurally notated by composer Dorian Wallace.
Mixed into “EAGE” is the detritus of love – what we’ve invented to advance the image of our ideal especially pop cultural interpretations of love – the power of coupling, the tokens we gift, the fashions we’ve crafted and the real estate we view as our garden of Eden. This could be a studio apartment or simply a state of mind – we connect location with romance in odd and affective ways.
This work is related to my previous projects; “V+M”, “Mythic Status” and “The Temptation of St. Anthony” as a reworking of mythic archetypes, and operates as a revisionist platform to inspire viewers to imagine their own definition of love.
“EAGE” is part of a song cycle that explores the emotional relationship between music and life.
