Anna Stevens

“Dull and inescapable nausea perpetually reveals my body to my consciousness.” – Sartre, 1992:362

Let this work serve as a reminder that we are nothing. Completely and utterly without importance or purpose. Just bags of meat surviving to produce the next bag of meat in a long line of bags of meat, for no end goal but with one absolute certainty – mortality. And isn’t that just absurd?

Using performative experimental film and installation, Stevens explores the vulnerable corporeality of the body. Inspired by 1970s and 80’s horror films (such as David Cronenberg’s Videodrome (1983) and Brian Yuzna’s Society (1989)). They balance comedy with horror through low-value, tacky imagery and techniques. They aim to increase mortality and bodily awareness to discuss absurdism, the idea that one cannot create a meaningful existence in a meaningless reality, while also encouraging an audience to accept and embrace this fact. Fleshy imagery is used to theatrically immerse an audience in fakery to highlight critical factors of reality and exhibit the body for what it really is – just meat. By taking Geoffrey Gorer’s theory of the pornography of death, removing the gore-driven imagery from its context, and re-contextualising it in an art space, the imagery grows to cause a deeper contemplation of the vulnerable body. However, rather than dwelling on unfulfilling death anxieties, awareness of the shortness and meaninglessness of life should be liberating. One can construct new and enjoyable meanings for oneself to live by. The artwork induces laughter and revulsion for cathartic release, parodying and paying homage to horror films of the 20th century.

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