PACIFIC NORTHWEST MUSEUM OF QUEER ART
  • ABOUT
    • Apply
    • Volunteer
    • PRESS
    • principles
    • Our story
    • CREAM
  • ARTISTS
  • projects
    • residencies
    • podcast
    • film
    • magazine
    • black elders
    • Break to Build
    • events
  • Contact

Great Press for "Lilies"!

2/2/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
This article by MAX TAPOGNA about FERTILE GROUND '21 made us so happy to see!

Lilies, poet Joni Renne Whitworth tells us, contain multitudes of meaning. The flower is a mainstay in Greek and Chinese myths, as well as Easter ceremonies. It symbolizes, among other things, love, grief, femininity, and rebirth—all themes present in Whitworth’s filmed poem, Lilies, which premieres on Wednesday, Feb. 3, as a part of Fertile Ground’s online festival of new works. Festival projects remain available to stream for free through Feb. 15 on Fertile Ground’s Facebook and YouTube channels.

Written and performed by Whitworth with video and sound by Hannah Piper Burns, Lilies is like opening a time capsule from the early days of the pandemic. “It’s like writing future history,” says Whitworth, who wrote the text last spring, when the rules for pandemic engagement were still setting in. “Once it changed from, ‘we’re home for two weeks,’ to, ‘we’re going to be in this for a while,’ there was just an energetic shift” – a shift, adds Whitworth, that was in stark contrast to the beautiful spring Portland was experiencing. “Nature was just merrily carrying along, and thriving,” Whitworth says. Lilies is their chronicle of that time. 

Image from Joni Renne Whitworth “Lilies.”The poem—which Whitworth describes as loosely autobiographical—ruminates on the tragic weight of Covid-19 as well as the pandemic’s unexpected comforts. It moves between perspectives personal and global. Lilies begins in a place of calm. Whitworth opens with the line, “Of course, / lesbians have dreamt of this for years: / sleeping in late, / reading to each other, / fretting over the cat.” Elsewhere, Whitworth hears Pacific wrens singing by their quarantine window, and remarks, “I’ve worked two jobs as long as I can remember, / I’ve never been home to hear them.” In these scenes, Whitworth’s restrained diction aids their imagery—watching Lilies, I felt cozy.

But these silver linings come at a price. Whitworth calls our new world flat and declarative, “A refrigerated truck for the bodies,” where people’s voices lack inflection. Later, they remark that “War-ravaged Syria just reported its first COVID-19 death. / We’re here. We’re here.” For Whitworth, even the “upsides” of the pandemic resist that qualification. “Is it true / that by lessening pollution, / and workplace accidents, / this industrial slowdown is / sparing lives / as well as taking them? / I can’t follow that logic to its reasonable conclusion.” 

Hannah Piper Burns’ editing helps create that sense of illogic. Burns, a found-footage filmmaker, says that in making Lilies she was interested in “this idea of our crises of attention, where one minute we are looking at our phone and the next minute a pot is boiling over, or we’re staring out the window and all of a sudden we’re thinking about death.” Fragmentation of thought plays a large role in the editing; the cuts are almost constant. The effect is that the film’s pacing is simultaneously brisk and meditative. Burns’ imagery is largely domestic (plenty of cooking, old homesteading footage, even clips from Animal Crossing), and we see lots of raindrops—on flower petals, windows, skin. 

Whitworth ends Lilies with the sobering acknowledgement that “There will come a Monday,” and when that Monday comes, they beg the question:
We are jobless artists / in a nation that hasn’t paid for art in years, / if ever. / Will society rise to meet us? / Will there be a place for us in the new world order? / Will I make something / with both of my hands?
Nearly a year has passed since the first lockdowns, and these questions are still in search of answers.

Lilies
 debuts at 9 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 3. All festival projects will be available through Feb. 15 to stream on Fertile Ground’s Facebook and YouTube channels.
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Archives

    May 2022
    March 2022
    November 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    July 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018

    Categories

    All
    Digital Residency
    Podcast
    Short Films
    Variety Show

    Want to stay in the loop?

Subscribe

Support queer artists!

Venmo: @FuturePrairie
Square Cash: $FuturePrairie
PayPal: FuturePrairie@gmail.com

Thank you  to Oregon Humanities, the National Endowment of the Humanities,    the Oregon Community Foundation, Blick, and Regional Arts and Culture Council for supporting our work.

503.928.9898

  • ABOUT
    • Apply
    • Volunteer
    • PRESS
    • principles
    • Our story
    • CREAM
  • ARTISTS
  • projects
    • residencies
    • podcast
    • film
    • magazine
    • black elders
    • Break to Build
    • events
  • Contact