WE ARE THE FRUITING BODY

May / June New Member Exhibition

• • Levi Bentley
• • Becoming / Collective
• • Maddie Hewitt
• • Marie Hinson

Vox Populi’s 2017 New Members’ cohort each examine the body through various lenses—its ecological, socio-political, and animal imbrications—in the group exhibition, WE ARE THE FRUITING BODY. We are enmeshed in these concerns and in each other, separated and joined by our ways of seeing; a manifold unit.

Levi Bentley:

At Night The States
Exploring towards physicality and embodiment from a background of enmeshment in textuality, Levi explores an affective turn towards animality from a place of disidentification. Trash gathered from the sidewalk and street while walking through Philadelphia and converges, precipitating into a dream bedroom, where we find, half-awake, a submerged affective state, nearly awakened, nearly dreaming. It’s kinship is with fishness and creaturely experience. An experiment in making and re-making meaning and selfhood from discarded materials. In addition, two pieces by Anastasio Wrobel are featured within the tableau as icon and inspiration. Levi Bentley has been a poet in Philadelphia for seven years.

Becoming / Collective:

Becoming / Collective is an interdisciplinary group that works together to combat the silence specific to sexual violence by creating and distributing feminist zines forged in the crucibles of urgency, disappointment, and violence, fueled by collaborative connectivity in order to make positive change. Together, we create zines and other forms of engagement with the goal of interpersonal connection and collective action. Becoming / Collective is a project by founding members Christy Davids, E. Maude Haak-Frendscho, and Crossley Simmons, who are poets, social workers, arts organizers, and educators. For WE ARE THE FRUITING BODY, Becoming / Collective invites response to the question What should an abuser do post-abuse? We invite participants to share their demands and desires, aggregating a collective response in an effort to shape the terms of how abusers address their responsibility and become accountable. We will collect and display contributions throughout the run of the exhibition, and will regularly upload photos to Instagram (@becomingcollective) in order to open the work up for response and continued circulation beyond the space of Vox Populi.

Maddie Hewitt

Carry Over (2018)

While watching news footage of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, Phil McCrory – who was working as a hairstylist at the time in Alabama – was struck by how otters were saturated with crude oil. Figuring human hair soaked up oil similarly to that of the otters, McCrory tested his theory by staging a small-scale, contained oil spill where he sought out to absorb motor oil with leftover hair from his salon. Since then, McCrory’s science experiment has been patented and distributed to mediate and repair environmental damage caused by oil spills.

In her performance video, “Carry Over,” Maddie Hewitt creates an artistic interpretation of Phil McCrory’s environmental remediation discovery to marvel at the way natural human processes can actually help minimize the effects of anthropogenic hazards. The project alludes to the traditional association of women with cleaning, hair as an adornment, and care taking of the body and of our living spaces, using the sound, rhythm, repetition, and intimacy from autonomous sensory meridian response (ASMR) trigger videos as a soundscape. As part of the exhibition, WE ARE THE FRUITING BODY, audiences are invited to bring their spare hair, which Maddie will collect and donate to Matter of Trust, an ecological nonprofit organization with a mission to link surplus with needs, promote naturally abundant renewable resources, and create inspirational eco-spaces.

Marie Hinson 

The Road Through South Pass (2018) 

A dreamy reimagining of the mountain landscapes of western Wyoming. The Road Through South Pass dwells on the lines both visible and invisible that we write into our land, and through the land into our bodies. Moving between documentary, dance, and scenic photography, eight short film poems wind their way through boundless sagebrush plains, picture perfect snow-capped peaks, and clean-lined frontier architecture.

For WE ARE THE FRUITING BODY, this two channel piece is permeated with a voiced text score from a handwritten notebook that serves as a diary or an incomplete atlas in a search for rootedness, place, and a way home.

Filmed in collaboration with choreographer Babs Case and dancers Luke Zender and Michaela Ellingson of Contemporary Dance Wyoming.

Marie Hinson is a cinematographer and artist, originally from the mountains of eastern Appalachia, Marie moved to Philadelphia for an MFA in film production. Marie’s experimental film practice explores combinations of actor improvisation, choreography, optical printing, observational documentary, landscape photography, and installation.

Their work has screened at the Montreal Underground Film Festival, London and Porto Undgeround Film Festival, Haverhill Experimental Film Festival, Big Muddy, The Y’allywood Film Festival, Scribe Video Center, Mechanical Eye Microcinema, and the Unexposed Microcinema. Most recently they were in an artist in residence at the Teton Artlab in Wyoming.

As a cinematographer, Marie lensed Iris Devins’ narrative short After the Date, about an unexpected romance between a trans woman and her new boyfriend, which premiered at Frameline41. Marie spent the past year as director of photography on Queer Genius, Catherine Pancake’s feature documentary about visionary queer artists including Rasheeda Phillips, Camae Ayewa, Eileen Myles and Barbara Hammer.