Creator: Kay Slater
Exhibition: Jabblescram 2020
Published: July 2020
Format: Video (uncaptioned, stock audio)
Access: YouTube (embedded below)
Content Warning: Video makes reference to eating disorders and alcoholism.
“I grew up with play kitchenettes. It didn’t really reveal itself as a gendered experience for me until I was much older because my mother loved to cook, and there was genuine love and respect in my imitation cooking. When my failure to become a competent cook was pitted against my expectations from having grown up assisting and learning beside my culinary-inclined role-model, it manifested as feelings of failure for not being a competent and self-reliant adult, and later life-partner. Garnish these feelings with a sprig of hearing loss, a side of ritual communal eating, and a blend of unattainable beauty standards and body dysmorphia, and one can see how easy it is to lose one’s appetite.”
Kay Slater
The Work:
Description of the Work
In a continued mission to incorporate play and live-making into their practice, Kay filmed the following short-movie with the goal of creating a live narrative using the game ready-mades and no script. In a burst of inspiration, upon spying their frying pan on the rack, the story starts innocently with elements of childhood play and kitchenettes. Once the letters are cooked, the story turns into a melange of thoughts and anxieties the artist feels when eating out in public. The soundtrack is made up of colour filters and static to express their frustration towards obnoxiously omnipresent “background music” in public eateries, the now ubiquitous call to “put on headphones” to “better” enjoy a game, mobile app, or interactive experience”, and in expressing their own experiences with synaesthesia.
The artist states: Video uses colour for sound expression. Video is meant to be played with sound off, or sound painfully loud. Soundtrack does not enhance the experience. Wear headphones at your own risk.
Within Jabblescram:
This project borrowed 100 letter tiles, the 15 x 15 gridded board, bag, and 4 tile racks included in a generic box of Scrabble. All pieces once used were returned to the box. Because this project uses ready-mades to which the artists does not own the rights, they ask that this video not be shared without their express permission.
Video uses sound clips (Candy Bar Wrapper, Frying Food, Pouring Drinks, Restaurant, Static1) from soundbible.com under CC License Attribution 3.0 (CC BY 3.0), http://soundbible.com/