You Make Me Iliad
2010 - Film & Video (Film & Video)
14:49 minutes
Mary Reid Kelley
Situated in German-occupied Belgium at the end of World War I, Y ou Make Me Iliad by Mary Reid Kelley focuses on the story of two. characters: a Belgian prostitute working near the frontlines and a young German soldier charged with monitoring the brothels. Harboring literary aspirations, the soldier goes in search of material to complete his novel. The material he believes he needs is sex. His encounter with the prostitute plays out over one hundred rhymed couplets densely packed with puns, language allusions, double entendre, and verbal winks, Reid Kelley reveals the unbalanced power dynamics and circumscribed gender roles of the war. The complexity of the script is as striking as it is frustrating in its opacity. Any “complete” meaning or connection is obfuscated as highlighted by the figures’ blocked eyes and the two-dimensional effect of their costumes, props, and makeup. Reid Kelley’s interest in this time period goes back to her graduate work at Yale University where she visited memorials and graves of men who left university to enlist during the war. Struck by how few first-hand accounts of women she was able to uncover, her videos often reconstitute experiences that would have otherwise been lost to history. You Make Me Iliad playfully appropriates this period to reflect that the status of women has not changed. Modern prevailing issues such as utopian ideologies and women’s liberation are as prevalent now as they were in the past.
Drawing from literature, plays, and historical events, Mary Reid Kelley makes rambunctious videos that explore the condition of women throughout history. They sardonically critique the view that recent social progress has resolved the unequal standing of women in society. Her work often involves intensive research and critical re-assessments of archetypal historical narratives—scholarship delivered as highly structured poetic verse, which serves as dialogue filled with contemporary cultural references. Her characters leap promiscuously through history and mythology, emphasizing moments of flux in gender roles and social structures. Working with videographer Patrick Kelley, Reid Kelley’s characters are usually all performed by her, disguised in elaborate costuming and makeup. They traverse animated and live-action landscapes created from the artist’s drawings and paintings. Initially trained as a painter, Reid Kelley’s stylized black-and-white visuals recall the crude aesthetics of early animation and the lo-tech look of amateur film. Teamed with her lexically complex scripts rife with historical references and wordplay, Reid Kelley’s works gesture to the instability of language and its role in history.
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