Wrapping for a marginal citizen

13 minutes, 26 seconds
Music: Michel Verheecke (Belgium),
Voice: Sonja van Kerkhoff,
Actors: 6 children.

English with a few New Zealand Māori words.

A quasi-biographical self-portrait of an artist and mother of young children where I use my own art objects as as backdrops or elements to compliment the narrative. The children's actions extend the narrative.

Two voices: a cynical one and an optimistic one 'converse' as images of eggs being played with, being forced into transparent egg-cups, being eaten and being broken merge between images of my art objects being played with by the children.

The "Wrapping," a long cloth bearing images of a baby with text directed at the viewer, occurs and reccurs throughout the video, reminding us of the dichotomy of the spectatorship of art. Are we the outsider, like the cloth or is the child staring at us the intruder?
We watch. The baby looks back at us.

And the children interact with texts and objects and perform. Their play is ambigious: is it natural, cultivated or child's play?

Notions of what is normal or central are undercut by the texts - comments made to me when I had a baby with me on a train, in a gallery or on the street.

In the video the children serve as symbols of survival, resistence and diversity. They are the main actors, and the words, the voice and the objects, (such as egg cups, boxs, the coffee table, the over-size playing card, the wooden rods, the caged animal, and the long cloth) are peripheral catalysts.