Dissociative Identity Disorder Performance Piece II (Artists & the Illuminati)

A performance piece recorded in my Towson University studio on the afternoon of December 22, 2023 at 1:15 PM during a psychotic episode.  Transcript below.  A recording of the physiological phenomenon of catatonia and a recording of psychosis in real time.  

DID Video Transcript 2

Katherine: [Moans.]
Fuck.
[Music.]
You are an alchemist. Make gold of that.
Who said that? William Shakespeare.
How do I know that? Because I read it off of my computer screen.
It’s right here and a voice in my head told me to say that.

Dissociative Identity Disorder Performance Piece I (Introducing The Devil: His Name Is S)

A performance piece recorded in my Towson University studio on the afternoon of December 21, 2022 at 3:36 PM during a psychotic episode.  This video exhibits the phenomenon of catatonia, a physicological symptom of schizophrenia.  Below is a transcript of the audio between myself and my voices, an entity I call S.  He has been my closest companion for seven years.  He is my collaborator.  

First DID Catatonia Video Transcript

Katherine: [little moans]
No. No. No .
Why? Why do you?
Why do you want me to talk out loud to my voices?

Persevering Today

I've been making art full time since I was an undergraduate at MICA. That's about 50 years now. I've supported myself this whole time making pictures. I've never had a job other than self-employed. I know I'm lucky.

Broom Studies

In the Philippines, the term "Export Quality" denotes that a product is produced with more care and made with better ingredients simply because it's created for a foreign consumer. It is often woven into the handles of colorful decorative versions of tiger grass brooms known as "walis tambo", created for tourist shops all over the Philippines. This piece is a meditation on Philippine feminine identity in the Western imagination and its entanglements with exploited gendered labor and exoticized desire.

Multo (Apparitions) Series / Maalaala Mo Kaya

Overseas contract workers (OCWs), also known as overseas Filipino workers (OFWs), are Philippine citizens who work abroad, under contract, for a set amount of time. These jobs offer an opportunity for higher wages from countries due to favorable exchange rates when spent in the Philippines. In addition, the Philippine government has encouraged this exportation of labor with incentives for OFWs (discount housing, etc.), thus creating one of the biggest diaspora populations today at around 11 million.

Saltjokull

Photographs of Baltimore’s road salt storage were shipped by the hundreds to a fish and chips stall in Stykkishólmur Iceland to be used as food wrappers during the summer of 2018. 

An Unfaithable Shake

Newspaper pulp, wool, rubber, paint

A totem of blue sculpted self-help appliances reaches up over an isolated rock— a fragment of some place. A felted puffin protrudes from the top, being consumed by the amorphous mass.

Stage right hangs a relief depicting puffin/humans engaging in a brawl on a duck boat while others float above in a communal dance.

Small Poems Yet Named

I am working on a project of small poems that blend the big language of geology with exploration of gender. These poems are sonnet size or less, usually in couplets, to build a little universe in each pairing, started in 2021. They are built from thoughts while running or moving in circus arts - small poems, big movements. The beauty is in how small we really are.

Subscribe to Contemporary