When I set out to make this video (with the temp.files prompt of “transformation” in mind) I was thinking a lot about bodily autonomy and self-advocacy on a personal and a political level. As abortion rights and trans rights have eroded so dramatically in the US in recent years, it has triggered feelings of profound helplessness and rage. As someone who has struggled to advocate for myself because of unconscious blocks, I decided to give myself the task of exorcizing some of those obstacles and advocating for myself and my body on an unconscious level. The hope is that this personal healing project might ripple out to the collective unconscious of our dangerously troubled nation.


As a kid who really enjoyed dance and movement, I love the movie Billy Elliot. If you haven’t seen it, the film follows a young boy who is secretly pursuing his passion for ballet in a 1980s mining town in the UK. His dad finds out and forbids him to continue. Instead of acquiescing, Billy breaks into a fervent dance (called “the Dance of Defiance”) ultimately convincing his dad he should continue. While this is very much a cinematic fantasy, I find his ability to express his rage and to advocate for himself in the face of a controlling power a useful model of joyful resistance.

For this project I decided to create my own “dance of defiance” to be performed ritualistically in each room of my home at night. Elite athletes often use rituals to ground themselves and prepare mentally and physically to perform at peak levels. The muscle memory and neural pathways associated with the ritual act give them a feeling of control and help them build confidence, which in turn enhances their performance. With this practical magic in mind, I thought the repetitive act of performing and shooting, then rewatching the footage over and over in the editing process might actually work on some level.

I’ve made a few videos over the years with footage shot in my dark apartment using only the flash on my camera phone. While those projects didn’t quite work, I found some of the imagery compelling enough to build this project around. Repetitive, seemingly endless roaming shots, around a dark apartment at night while family members are sleeping, have a waking dream, trance-like quality that I thought would be really helpful here. And the home, with its well worn pathways and habits, the clutter and grime we no longer notice, seemed an ideal stand in for the dark recesses of the unconscious mind. Shooting into reflective surfaces to superimpose the flash onto my body felt like a healing gesture, like my own sort of light therapy and I paired this technique with the  ecstatic dance sequences for maximum impact.

For the soundscape, I combined the audio of my body moving and mouthing the words to an inaudible song with the mournful sounds an old apartment emits- wooden floors and radiators. To hold it all together and to add another level of therapeutic possibility, I recorded a sound healing session with Mariko Tamegai that I edited and manipulated to form the backbone of the video.