Johanna Householder & b.h. Yael

Approximations, Parts 1 - 3

photographs and 3 single channel videos, 2000-2001
September 11 - October 10
Opening Reception September 11

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Approximations, Parts 1 - 3

1. The Mission, colour, 4 min 21 sec., 2000

This tape is a shot-for-shot recreation – edited in camera – of the opening scene of Francis Ford Coppola’s 1979 landmark film, Apocalypse Now, with Johanna Householder in the role of Captain Benjamin Willard. By replacing Sheen’s body with her own, Householder probes subjectivity and the processes of identification as b.h. Yael duplicates Vittorio Storaro’s Academy Award™ winning cinematography dogme style.

2. December 31, 2000, colour, 7 min. 22 sec., 2001

December 31, 2000  is a shot-for-shot recreation of the pivotal scene in Stanley Kubrick's classic 2001: A Space Odyssey in which Dave dismantles HAL, the renegade computer. But on December 31, 2000, Kubrick's apocalyptic dream has not yet been realized.  The domestic scene supplants the space station, and household appliances become the conduit through which we enter the mainframe. In ironic reversal,  the failure of the future is exposed.

3. Next to Last Tango, colour, 7 min., 2001

Johanna Householder gets in a bag with Francis Bacon, Bernardo Bertolucci, Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider, re-reading the infamous “butter scene” from the highly controversial 1972 film which, according to Pauline Kael, "changed the face of an art form." Commissioned by Trinity Square Video for the Trans>Sex>Tech Residency.