Preston, Julieanna. i don’t know how to love you [performance video, 10 mins] 2023. Intense Interiors: Architecture and Film Symposium, Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada, 6-7 May 2023..
This experimental video muses on the frustration, confoundment and utter bewilderment that comes with loving one's self, another, and an other over time. All three videos were produced in 2021 and performed in 2017 by Julieanna Preston. Joshua Lewis videographer. Each video employs two bodies, one human and the other, a surrogate, a bag made voluminous with breath and depleted without. The ensuing relationship suggests something unattainable, something uncomfortable, something fraught yet worthy of the struggle where joy, pain, pleasure and turmoil are inextricably co-existent. References to “staying afloat”, “wrestling with the black dog”, “embracing one’s enemy”, “love they self”, “inflating one’s ego” and of course, George Bataille’s “la petite morte” play havoc with attempts to treat this as a black and white matter.
