Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

Mariah Garnett

Garbage, The City, And Death

Vidéo expérimentale | dv | couleur | 7:31 | USA | 2010

Garbage, The City, And Death is an eight-minute, single-channel video. It consists of three scenes from a Fassbinder play of the same title, which was banned from the stage in Germany in 1985. My adaptation consists of the scenes between Roma, the prostitute and Franz, her boyfriend/pimp. I play Franz and my half-sister, Joanna Coleman, plays Roma. The couple bickers over money problems, her undying love for him, and his general disgust with her (produced by his latent homosexuality). The film moves from the city, where they are living in their car, to the Salton Sea, to a hot tub in the night. This project was born out of a month-long visit between long-lost sisters who did not grow up together. I use Fassbinder?s text as a means of exploring concepts relating to sibling-hood that do not exist in my actual relationship with my sister. Sibling rivalry is warped here into a lovers? quarrel. As Franz and Roma?s relationship deteriorates, their surroundings become progressively more intangible. They end in a vaccum, engulfed by the blackness of night, as they are drawn hopelessly closer together despite Franz? clear disdain for her and desire to get away from her.

Mariah Garnett, 30, lives and works in Los Angeles and is pursuing her MFA at Calarts in Film/Video. Often using markers from a multitude of genres, Garnett`s work addresses gender and performativity and blurs lines between "fiction" and "reality". She has worked with A.L. Steiner, Zackary Drucker, Peter Berlin, Wu Ingrid Tsang, Stanya Kahn, and Cheryl Dunye. Her work has shown internationally in festivals and galleries (Outfest, Los Angeles Film Festival, Rencontres Internacionales). She graduated with a BA in American Civilization from Brown University in 2003.