Like Muscle to the Bone

Single Channel Video
10 mins 53 secs
2016

A woman asks: “What was buried beneath the ground?”
A woman replies: “The earth stretched and gave around us. We were held there, the way muscle holds the bone.”

Like Muscle to the Bone opens with the sound of breathing, images of hands pushing through soil, and a young black performer standing in field of dried, yellow grass. These images evolve throughout the work as the camera travels through an industrial building where a group of five women dressed in black perform a gestural choreography of expanding and contracting together. Leaving the industrial space, the camera returns to the field and lingers on the young performer as she gazes through a window in a green door in the midst of the grass. The piece is threaded through with a spoken text in which the question, What was buried in the ground?, is asked repeatedly throughout the duration of the work.

As the first piece in the HUNGER video cycle, Like Muscle to the Bone’s dreamlike tone, specific use of location, interest in materiality and movement, and use of language set the framework for the proceeding work. It acts as the first portal into the world being constructed. Like Muscle to the Bone is followed by This Eternal Thread in the video cycle.