TMI - Alyssa Taylor WendtAlyssa Taylor Wendt

TMI

TMI is a single-channel video that explores the abstract concept of inherited memory. Filmed throughout Detroit in abandoned commercials spaces, the piece showcases performances by tap and modern dancers, pianists, professional whistlers, gospel and torch singers. Evolved from my previous three-channel video, TMI investigates the idea that we get more than DNA from our ancestors, potentially living with their fears, triumphs, failures and loves. Carl Jung wrote that buildings can act as symbols for the soul in his writings on dream analysis. My new video uses such spaces to represent genetic memory and to create an abstract ritual for exploring this potential. Shot primarily in empty malls, basements, hospitals, nightclubs, retail stores and office buildings I present these interiors as one unified body of the spirit, connected by doorways, ruins, performances and song. The journey is cyclical and showcases a variety of interpreters, like visitors from our past and future selves, intoning a rich landscape of cross-cultural expressions of dance, gesture, cinema, musical genres, atmosphere, folklore and movement. A work-in-progress of this piece was shown as part of the exhibition that I curated called Sanctum at Big Medium in the fall of last year. Production will be finished this spring. The following are staged production stills from the shoot. 2020