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- All Subjects: Humanities
- All Subjects: Höömii
- Creators: Paine, Garth
- Creators: Buettner, Marie
This creative project examines identity, autonomy, and social hierarchy by manipulating the traditions and iconography of female figural painting. Female identity and autonomy is often marked by a tense relationship between the self and the body. Socially acceptable self-expression of one's behavior, body, and desires is strictly regulated within a set of often paradoxical parameters that repress abject, 'animal' behaviors. This series of three paintings reacts to this culture of restraint and repression by exposing the body to nature once more, finding catharsis in annihilation and the destruction of boundaries between the Self and the Other. The human body is depicted as a host for animal life cycles, exploring the duality of creating and supporting life while simultaneously being destroyed. Animals that embody socially unacceptable behaviors are brought crashing back into the human form, reuniting the idealized, contrived female figure with an expressive, imperfect nature and sense of self. Hybridized animal-human relationships in the paintings break down the falsely hierarchical distinction between 'humans' and 'animals' that distances and privileges humanity from that which is considered primitive. By releasing the human body to the uncomplicated consumptive and reproductive forces of ‘trash’ animals in these paintings, the work challenges how the worth of existence is socially defined, instead affirming that all life has some inherent value distinct from its transactional worth to society at large. This celebration of the grotesque shakes off repressive social constructs, offering a unique form of catharsis and agency.
Strong.mng is a 25-minute production for dancer, live digital illustrator, and overtone singer with a laptop computer serving as both a fixed and interactive responsive musical instrument. The music draws upon themes from höömii and tsols through the lens of virtual fieldwork, which was the research method I used to inform strong.mng. Through the composing and performing of strong.mng, I arrived at the following three-part hypothesis: firstly, the development of a robust symbiotic relationship between höömii, tsols, and today’s electronic music technology may transform the technological devices used into agents of deep ecology and bodily interconnectedness. Secondly, this transformation may metamorphose the performer into a more courageous being who is strengthened both physically and mentally by the Mongolian belief that, when performing höömii and tsols, the musician is drawn into kinship with nature. Lastly, I believe some computer music is restrained in its potential by techno-somatic discreteness as well as anthropocentrism, and that applying philosophies from höömii and tsols can help move computer music more towards a physically embodying means of sonification; one that is also akin with the natural world.