The Spinnning Wheel
Based off a common fairy tale type, The Tale of the Kind and the Unkind Girls, the installation’s contents parody a moral economy that relies on two competing versions of femininity where “goodness” is determined by the willingness to perform pointless and repetitive domestic labor. Making a Rube Goldberg-esque spinning wheel out of a 16mm film projector and reel-to-reel rewinder thread with yarn, I created a performance for video where I tried to work the machine using only my feet. The video, shot on “nanny cam” through a hole in the wall, appears in the installation through projection onto a hand knit blanket. Attaching the end of the blanket to a 16mm projector and setting it in rewind, themes of work and futility are reified as the projector unravels the screen’s yarn row by row.