KARA CROMBIE - PITTSBURG. USA.

12 JANUARY 2010

Written by ALEXANDER CONNER

Ms. Crombie implores you to become part of the inquisitorial staff and exact revenge on the vision she seeks.  She's hiding in a cave in some far off mountain-top to avoid contact.  She's practicing levitation as a form of self discipline.  She's an ascetic aesthetic, but only because I want to think of her that way.  Maybe she's a people person; her videos certainly lend themselves to such a discernment. 
 

Let's step back for a second.  Does Ms. Crombie, by using herself as an actor in her films, want us to view her as a protagonist or antagonist of the plots she's weaving?  I often think neither.  She is part of the background.  She blends in with the surfaces and settings in which she places herself, which seem like they are of primary importance.  To engage with a Malthusian argument, the absence of her person from her films represents a positive action.  To engage with a Marxian argument, she's a cog in the wheel of a machine; the parts being less important than the whole.  To argue for the sake of arguing, she's a someone trying to be a no one.

Her other actors?  Her other films?  I have followed her progress for a while and was recently privy to seeing a more recent work at Vox Populi in Philadelphia.  Vox (as it is more commonly truncated) offers some of the most progressive work available for viewing in Philadelphia.  Ms. Crombie offered us an antebellum narrative, different from the other work I'd seen.  I was confused and hopeful during my time with it.  Where was her insight taking her?  Turns out that the characters she's created further elaborate on the themes I've attempted to elucidate above.  Digitally manipulated, they allow her to work with realities she mines, which might not otherwise be penetrable.  Her use of contemporary dialect within a historical context is just another way of offering her viewers an ambiguous reality.  I won't ruin the video, in case you have the privilege of viewing it in a space near you, but it is certainly a bit of a wonderful reflection on the usage of actors within their setting - a sort of meta-projection time-warp Jerry Springer haphazard not-so-guilty-because-it's-art pleasure.

 

Perhaps Ms. Crombie wouldn't think of her work in these terms.  Perhaps I'm reading her incorrectly.  However, if you get fed bread, you taste bread, and Ms. Crombie's brioche is rich and fluffy and every bite asks me to take another.  I can't wait for the next time I get an opportunity to view her work in person.

 

http://www.karacrombie.com/