This is a video recording of my thesis talk for my MFA Exhibition of CONTROL. To see details of the work, video clips, and images, please check out the following links:

Still Images of Exhibition:

flickr.com/​photos/​zerbetron/​sets/​72157626243682729/​

Actual Work:

flickr.com/​photos/​zerbetron/​sets/​72157625319828654/​

vimeo.com/​10992985

vimeo.com/​19547499

Fat bodies are considered abject, grotesque and inhuman in our society. Often times fat people are dehumanized, marginalized and demoralized in public by fetishizing their fat body parts on television, news stations, and in popular media. This short video piece deals with the hurtful things said to fat women about their bodies.

The hands, shadows, and light move across and sculpt the rolls of flesh in response to negative comments and attacks hurled at fat women in response to their physical appearance. Being fat in a society obsessed with body image is not only frowned upon, it’s grounds for abusive treatment.

Every word in this video was actually spoken to me, or another woman I know about her body. A stark contrast to my “Plush” series (flickr.com/​photos/​zerbetron/​sets/​72157623218966231/​), this video shows the hard, unyielding reality of how the fat body is treated in American Culture.

Seoul is one of the high heel capitals of the world. Meaning that there are literally more high heel shoes made, sold, bought, and worn here that most other major cities in the world. It’s so beyond what even I, as an American female, can describe as “normal”. One particular place I found the selling and purchasing of high heels to be just beyond ludicrous was the subway transfer stations.

How odd, that even when transferring from one line to another, women are still being marketed to about their bodies. Even better, the most basic and important function of shoes: to protect the feet, are the exact opposite of what a high heel shoe does. Now many Korean women who have participated in a life time of high heel wearing are having to get foot surgeries to deal with the repeat stress fractures caused to the ball of the foot and toes….most x-rays bear strong similarities of x-rays of bound feet, another eastern ritual practiced on women’s feet for the sake of beauty.

So, in order to respond to this, I decided to do a performance piece. I chose 4 busy subway transfer stops in the Seoul Metro system, and at each transfer stop I bought a pair of high heel shoes that I felt were somehow indicative of that place in Seoul, or the uniquely Korean perspective on fashion. Then, I stood in each pair of heels, motionless, during rush hour in those same 4 subway transfer points. How long I stood was dependent upon how much the heels cost. So, for example, if the first pair I purchased cost 45,000 won, then I stood in them for 45 minutes. Then the next pair was 10,000 won, so I stood for 10 minutes.

Ok, so let me be frank….I’m a woman and I do at times enjoy a pair of high heels. I’ve worn them often and for long periods of time. But nothing could have prepare me for how much standing completely still for that long in a pair of heels really REALLY hurts your feet! I filmed each performance in the heels, and edited together a brief video loop.

Seeing someone standing still while others are moving can be a bit unnerving, but I feel it speaks to how cultures progress, women’s rights evolve, and everything seems to move forward….yet here we are, still torturing our bodies in the name of beauty. It all actuality, we are standing still.

This is a short documentation of a much longer video installation shown in the Fox 3 Gallery at The Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, MD as part of the MFA show for Photographic and Electronic Media. This piece deals with a few layers of beauty, self image, and narcissistic rituals as they relate to social media and social networking sites. Original run time of 36:07 minutes, the piece shows one long take of the process of applying the “face” and what implicates many women to get trapped in a cycle of daily beauty rituals.

Tweet by EvilRobert: @zerbetron you’ll always be the video camera girl.

URWUT = You Are What You Tweet. This is a project where small multi media pieces are created inspired by people’s tweets. Each piece works to encompass the mood, feeling, meaning, or moment captured by the individual tweet.

Each piece’s approx. runtime is determined by the length of the tweet. Since twitter enforces a 140 character limit, the pieces are rooted in brevity. This tweet was 52 characters, so the video runs approx. 52 seconds.

The tweet: @zerbetron you’ll always be the video camera girl.

As part of a conversation, this at-reply is intended to only be clear for the recipient. Reading it is like only hearing one half of a telephone conversation. It is shrouded in mystery and the implication of events long past; like sharing an inside joke or long kept secret between two close friends. I wanted the layers in the video to represent this dreamlike memory…foggy yet clear enough to ascertain the hint of something much deeper.

A Mockumentary of the first ever Richmond VA Zombie Walk, held in October of 2006.

This short documentary covers an anti-abortion rally on VCU’s campus in the summer of 2006. What started out as a “normal” anti-abortion rally radically shifted gears when students turned up in droves to stand for a woman’s right to choose. The focus of the piece shifted dramatically when we noticed the extremely young children who where attending the rally with their families. Suddenly the question of tactics, not politics, took the center stage.

Gallery installation challenging the boundaries between sex and violence in American culture. Originally a 3 channel projection, the violence on the center wall, with the faces on the opposing walls. This piece challenges our cultural boundaries with sex, violence, and how we interact with each. What makes you more uncomfortable and why?