JESSICA MENSCH

HECATE’S PALLADIO

A single installation comprised of 4 works, that combine painting and video. Materially this work explores such temporal questions as, When does painting become a prop or set piece, and what is paintings relationship to the moving image?

Conceptually Hecate’s Palladio explores the uncanny roles that women performed in magic shows in the 19th and 20th century. Taking media scholar, Erica Beckman’s, Vanishing Women, as a guide to such figurations of the uncanny, a clear connection exists between visual technologies from this period and performances of the uncanny. Beckman noted that performances in magic shows from the 19th and 20th century commonly included the uncanny disappearance, reappearance, burning, beheading and bisection of women. Having recently read Marxist feminist scholar, Silvia Federici’s Witches, Witch-hunting and Women, this particular example of the uncanny stood out to me. It was impossible not to see a formal and cultural overlap between the uncanny theatrical performances of violence that Beckman describes, and the burning, and beheading performed and endured by women in the witch trials of 16th and 17th century England. For me, this overlap mirrored the uncanny material presence of painting when removed from the wall and brought into the space of the viewer, calling its function and meaning into question.

The singular work, Hecate's Palladio, consists of video projections and a 15’ x 10’ painting in dye on canvas. The painting depicts an architectural model I made out of clay. My model was based on the 16th century architectural scenic backdrop of the Teatro Olympico in Vicenza, Italy. This feature was based on Roman theatre design. In its original, it was a false architectural façade, several stories tall, and located upstage from the audience. It served to draw the eye of the audience to the stage, which was essential given the expansive size of ancient Roman theatres. Its size delineated a backstage, where actors could change costumes, and theatrical drops hung.

The Teatro Olympico version is marked by five doorways that open to reveal trompe-l'oeil renderings of city streets. These thresholds align with distinct sightlines from the audience. In my doorways I’ve projected two identical figures of Hecate, the three-headed goddess of sorcery, magic, and guardian of the threshold between life and death. Here, she symbolically mirrors the uncanny presence of women in magic shows, who perform a daily crossing from life into death.

Over time, both Hecates leave their bodies to explore their assigned threshold by clambering and climbing up the painted architectural backdrop that separates on-stage from off-stage. In a similar fashion to The Grotto, Hecate’s performance points to the relationship between performance and painting.

She is presented in close proximity to Hecate’s Palladio, She consists of painted props and video.

This work more directly references the uncanny 'vanishing' of women in magic shows by recreating Fredrick Eugene Powell’s 19th century illusion, She. In Powell’s version, the female assistant appears to burn alive while sitting atop a small table.

In my version, Hecate's head, (the very prop used in the video projection for Hecate's Palladio), rests on the table. Viewers are invited to peer into her eyes to see the floating image of a Sulfur-crested Cockatoo on a winding staircase. This illusion is created using the mid-nineteenth century technique, called Pepper's Ghost. Through the strategic placement of reflective panes of glass, and a lighted subject, the subject appears to float, like a ghost, in midair. Around the legs of the table a set of mirrors are positioned to render the back hidden. Two candles placed in front of these further this illusion. In Powell’s version, these mirrors allowed the woman to secretly escape from her burning table.

As a painting, this work traverses the boundary between prop and narrating subject, where the animated head of Hecate, becomes the necromancer and maker of magic. This points to the possibilities for shifting roles, forms, locations and meanings when the parameters that have traditionally defined painting are removed.

Astronomical Loop consists of video projections and an 8’ x 8’ painting that leans against a wall. The work depicts a planetary body with craters that resemble eyes. Its phases, as well as a small body of water, are projected onto the painting. A volcanic orifice spewing fire and smoke punctuates the surface. This illusion was made by cutting a hole in the canvas and positioning an LED light and humidifier behind it. One side of the canvas pulls away from the wall to reveal this mechanism to viewers.

Hecate, who is associated with the moon as it goes through its waning phases, remains symbolically present. The image and graphic quality of the piece is a nod to the film, A Trip to the Moon (1902) by magician and filmmaker George Melies. This film was among the earliest to popularize the medium's capacity for creating worlds through special effects.

Like most theatrical productions, this painting has a backstage – further complicating the definition of painting itself. The inclusion of video, like in The Grotto, references phantasmagoria shows of the 19th century. Here, video extends the temporal presence of painting beyond the more familiar strategy of bringing it into the space of the viewer.

A Door is comprised of a video feedback loop using two webcams and a projector.  The combined live-feed is projected on a 4 x 8 foot painting in acrylic on canvas.

The feedback loop created by the webcams and projector, create afterimages of the painting recalling the hallucinatory effect of visual 'trails' and early artistic experiments in video. Like Hecate's Palladio, this work pictures a threshold - specifically a doorway. When approached, the live feedback translates the body of the viewer into a performing subject, alongside the painting itself.