Lisa Birke

Lisa Birke Red Carpet Video Still, 15:00 min, 2013

Red carpet is a durational performance-for-video that follows a glamorous female figure in a black glittering gown and three inch heels, teetering down a seemingly endless red carpet — a carpet that cuts its way through an ever-changing landscape.

The figure in red carpet is at once present in the landscape but is also simply moving through it in her enactment of forced poise. She is physically separated from her setting by the culturally mediating carpet. In mythology, a mortal walking upon a carpet symbolizes a dangerous desire to attain the status of godliness. Portentous undercurrents are thus palpable in red carpet. This is witnessed in the endurance of physical pain—in pushing through, in bearing, and in resisting the elements—and also in the testing of psychological endurance through the tedium of the action. Our heroine arrives at a conclusion that is tragi-comic—gendered, mediated, stoic and flawed—thus, essentially human.

Courtesy of Lisa Birke

Cold Cuts Video Festival 2014