ABOUT
This experimental short considers the unrecognized labor in having and being a body. The puppets, disembodied meaty legs, flayed of skin, dance in repetition even as they start to decompose.
The Expectation of the Observed meditates on how much our bodies do not actually seem belong to us. The repeated stress on marginalized bodies as political symbols, perform for an expectant audience who is implicated in their watching. The dance, a performance on a bare wooden stage shows in satire, literal meat under duress trying to remain in rhythm only to be torn apart. Muscle and sinew break away and surface disintegrates.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve been most drawn to work that requires care; an accumulation of small intimate gestures. Working frame by frame, the gesture(s) of a puppets in pose create a collaborative ritual as I pace to and from the camera.
CREW
director
Stephanie J Williams
@steph.j.williams
Stephanie J. Williams is a tinkerer and doodler. Her work primarily navigates hierarchies of taste, unpacking how “official” histories are constructed in order to understand social coding. She received an MFA in Sculpture from RISD, has shown in Fictions, part of the Studio Museum in Harlem’s F-Shows exhibition series, as well as with Washington Project for the Arts, Rutgers University, |’sindikit |, Tephra ICA and the Walters Museum as a Sondheim Finalist. She has held recent residencies with Sculpture Space, Williams College and the Corporation of Yaddo. Her current projects include, Hospes, a puppet stop motion about the body as a political object supported by Saul Zaentz Innovation Fund and a DC Arts and Humanities Fellowship, and The Expectation of the Observed, a stop motion commission about unrecognized labor for Stone Quarry Art Park in Cazenovia, NY. She currently teaches stop motion as full time faculty at Maryland Institute College of Art.
sound designer
Andrew Paul Keiper
@shudderingnoisemachine
Andrew Paul Keiper (he/they) is an artist and educator based in Baltimore, Maryland. Working in sound, image and installation, Andrew's work dances across the boundaries of sound art, experimental music and sound design. Field recordings, drones, drumming and sound designed evocations of places remote in time and place commingle in Andrew’s work, inviting the audience to listen in ways they may not be accustomed to listening.
Andrew received his BFA in painting from the Mason Gross School of the Arts in 2002 and his MFA in Photographic and Electronic Media from MICA in 2016. He has exhibited nationally, including in Baltimore, New York City, Philadelphia, New Jersey and Washington DC. In 2016 and 2019 Andrew was a Sondheim Prize semi-finalist, and in 2016 won a Rubys Artist Grant. Andrew has exhibited at museums and galleries including SECCA, the Baltimore War Memorial, Ethan Cohen Gallery’s KuBe, apexart, at ArtYard, Florida State University’s Museum of Fine Arts and Maryland Art Place. Andrew teaches sound design and thesis at the Maryland Institute College of Art.
