Happily Ever After / Forever Yours

Eleonora Roaro, Milan (IT) — Video, Installation, Performance

2016

Sound Design; Audio Editing; MIxing; Mastering

> "Forever Yours" is a project made for the exhibition “Stoner. Landing Pages” and inspired by Edith Bostwick, a fictitious character from John William’s novel “Stoner”. It points out that her psychotic and obsessive behavior could be due more to social causes than private, as she embodies the institution of marriage. Indeed, she is only meant to be protected by her husband and to be respectful of the wife’s duties.

The video-installation “Edith” is positioned on the ceiling instead of a surveillance camera: her blue eye sees and knows everything, as in the book. The performance “The Wedding” stages the rite of marriage: the artist waxes roses, an ephemeral symbol of desire, in order to make them last longer than they are supposed to do, as it happens with institutions. The soundtrack is a collage made from TV news about violent acts towards women and a disrupted bridal march (sound design: Alice Lamperti and Ismael Lô). The performance “His Desk” reenacts a scene from the novel in which Edith steals her husband’s desk and paints it in pink as a violent form of appropriation. In this way she deprives him of his identity and affirms hers. “Happily Ever After” is an on-going collection of vintage wedding photographs in which every male figure is delated with fuchsia nail polish. <

Eleonora Roaro