Untitled Dance, 2008 (collaboration with Chad Wentzel)

digital video

01'00 min clip from 02'10 min video

The source material for Mathern's Untitled Rave Dance, this piece features Chad Wentzel's original freestyle dance at 1/3 speed, turning his movement and backing soundtrack into a primitive, almost tribal expression.

Untitled Rave Dance, 2008

Digital video

02'10 min

This project was created for Anne's collaborative exhibition with Chad Wentzel entitled "This is the Worst Trip I've Ever Been On: Acculturation in a Pre-Apocalyptic Age."  Here Mathern appropriates her best friend's sub-cultural past by memorizing and performing a freestyle rave dance the artist had recorded months prior.  Taking on the absurd task of mimicking Wentzel's style and completely random movement, Mathern subverts the original expressive intentions of the dance and reduces them to a learnable cultural identity.

I Am A Poor Pilgrim of Sorrow, 2008

Digital audio

01'26 min clip from 05'36 min recording

Originally recorded by the Old Regular Baptists of early 1900s Appalachia, I am a Poor Pilgrim utilizes a centuries-old form of congregational singing where melodies are learned orally.  Parishoners take turns selecting lyrics from their hymn book to share their spirituality with fellow church members.   Here the artist has recorded herself along with the congregation, at times not able to complete the response.

No, 2006

Digital video

00’35 min clip from 02’50 min video

An endurance piece, no less ridiculous than Bruce Nauman’s No, No, New Museum (Clown torture series), 1987, minus the tantrum, but with the added polemic of a feminine perspective.   Just what is she protesting?  In this infinite loop, does the repetition diminish or drive home the imperative?

Toccata and Fugue, 2006

digital audio

03’40

Johann Sebastian Bach’s full-of-bravura masterwork for the pipe organ composed circa 1705, here bravely and masterfully whistled by Anne Mathern circa 2007.

The image shown is a large scale replication of a pipe organ Mathern created for an installation at the Seattle gallery, Crawl Space.  A small scale sculpture accompanies the audio piece.

Come Stai, 2005

Super 8 to digital video transfer

01’20 clip from 03’00 video

Mathern lip synchs to 60s, Italian pop star, Domenico Modugno’s Come Stai while riding in the back of a pickup truck as the northwest landscape rolls by in the background.  Like her Doomhawk project, this video is another example of Mathern’s interest in transposition and displacement–exploring a breakdown in mimesis by removing a gendered cultural object from its original purpose or setting and then reproducing it faithfully in a foreign (and often downright inappropriate) context.   Similar to a method actor totally committed to a role, or a masterful karaoke performance, this work should also be viewed as a continuation of her other “endurance” or “memorization” projects.

Doomhawk, 2007

HD video

01’18 min clip from 02’26 min video

Doomhawk, a fantasy-metal band of 20-something, gay, straight and transgender members is the subject of this video.  If we can assume that there is a “tribalizing effect” of dress, behavior and dogmas implied by one’s outward appearance, Mathern captures that moment in this piece.  Doomhawk represents an escape from present day reality and a return to a darker, primal age.  It is as admirable and earnest as it is tragic.  Stripping them of their performative power by only presenting them without their instruments in quick, photo-flash portraits, Mathern denies them their specific brand of spirituality and instead presents her own vision in the genre of spirituality.  Mathern has stated that she chose Doomhawk because they make work the same way she does.  Where the two differ is content.  The artist’s representation of Doomhawk exposes that we all have tribes and we all share types of iconographies (tattoos, jewelry, make-up, clothes), its how we interpret or deploy them (our iconologies) where the trouble (war, ignorance, racism, sexism, etc.) begins.