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In The Jungle

Stephanie Barber

2017 01:02:53 United StatesEnglishColorStereo16:9HD video
Tags:
Animals, Music, Philosophy, Poetry

Description

In The Jungle playfully and sorrowfully tells the tale of an unreliable narrator in a self-imposed exile. Given a grant to study the equivalent of animal cries and whines in jungle flora our heroine has lived for 1,612 days deep in an unnamed jungle. This jungle serves as an extended metaphor for excessive and continual growth and death and fear and sustenance; a metaphorical space of chaos in which the scientist finds solace and which stands in contrast to the human jungle of 'civilization'.

Equal parts musical, performance, and poetic lecture, In The Jungle is an hour long, single channel video written and directed by Stephanie Barber, starring Cricket Arrison (of Wham City) and M.C. Schmidt (of Matmos.)

About Stephanie Barber

Stephanie Barber is an American writer and artist. She has created a poetic, conceptual and philosophical body of work in a variety of media. Many of her videos are concerned with the content, musicality and experiential qualities of language. They ferry viewers through philosophical inquiry with the unexpected oars of play, emotionalism, story, and humor. Many balance several seemingly unrelated concepts––subtly suggesting or brazenly demanding a focused and imaginative reception. Many create gently complex, emotional studies. Others are funny; a sorrowful sort of funny. There are videos of obsessive observing and ambient sounds; small artificial fireworks, animals, and silence. They are tightly wound, dense, and light simultaneously.

Barber's films and videos have has been screened nationally and internationally in solo and group shows at MOMA, NY, The Tate Modern, London; The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY; The Paris Cinematheque; The Walker Art Center, MN; MOCA Los Angeles, The Wexner Center for Art, OH, among other galleries, museums and festivals. Her essays, stories and poems have been published in books, magazines and online journals.