The feast project book and photographic installation: "Christy Johnson & 33 Confessors" Video Installation: "The Set"

This artist’s project represents four years of research (in part funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, the British Council, UCR California Museum of Photography, and UCCA, UK (now titled University for the Creative Arts). The work has developed across platforms and resulted in a number of linked pieces, which extend and expand Johnson’s interests in the interface between the archive, the book, the screen, and the museum. The project has three distinct components: photographic site-specific installation, video triptych (projection/dual monitor work) and a published artist’s book distributed by Art Data, London. The Feast Project was previewed and launched in April 2007 in the Oculorium Gallery/Project Space at the UCR California Museum of Photography in the USA. This work represents a convergence of three strands of inquiry: identity and the body, sites of memory, and the archive. The work as a whole aims to explore how the female body is socially and sexually constructed through transformative religious ritual; contemporary practices of intervention and the museum; collecting, re(collecting) and the relationship of artefact and memory; and the archive as a site of reclamation and narration. Through critical intervention, found material has been mobilised and the ’record’ put in question. The Feast Project operates as a set of interchanges between then and now, and reclaims a space for the reactivation of identity. ARTIST’S BOOK © 2007 Feast: Christy Johnson and 33 Confessors Publication ISBN 978-1-870522-49-6 208 pages, b/w Hardback Edition of 1,000 27.5 x 22 x 2 cm Distribution: Art Data, London, UK USA Book Launch and Artist’s Talk 28 April 2007 University of California Riverside, California Museum of Photography UK Book Launch and window work "Missal" 20 September 2007, bookartbookshop, London Feast: Christy Johnson and 33 Confessors is a performative proposition, where levels of enactment and re-enactment are in dialogue. Johnson is particularly interested in the document as a ritual space, and how the book form can become a site for discursive interplay. She has created and drawn upon two distinct but related archives: found photographic imagery (the appropriated record) and contemporary spoken narratives whereby the past and present are brought into contact with each other. She has sought and collected hundreds of First Communion photographic images from various countries in the Americas and Europe. The anonymous portraits span the years 1877-1970. The bookwork features the photographs of prepubescent girls and explores their performative staging as 'virginal brides' for the public communal event, as well as the private photographic record. Alongside the visual archive, Johnson has conducted interviews with thirty-three women of differing social backgrounds and nationalities, ages and current involvement and position to religion. The edited text excerpts have been taken from the audio archive and juxtaposed with the found images in order to oppose, support, challenge, complement, contradict, subvert, or go beyond the meanings offered by the photographs themselves. At the end of the work, three essays provide an interdisciplinary perspective on the project: •Archival Memories: Between History and Experience (pp.182-89) Margherita Sprio, Lecturer and Scheme Director MA Art and Film, Department of Art History and Theory, University of Essex, UK •Retrieval and Transmittal in a Fictive Photographic Experience (pp.190-97) Catherine Clinger, Visiting Professor of Art History, Department of Art and Art History, University of New Mexico, USA •All in White for the Feast: Whiteness in the Christian Imaginary (pp.198-205) Jenny Daggers, Senior Lecturer in Theology and Religious Studies, Liverpool Hope University, UK PHOTOGRAPHIC INSTALLATION Oculorium Gallery UCR/ California Museum of Photography, USA Curated by Ciara Ennis Feast: Christy Johnson and 33 Confessors 108 - 92 h x 61 w cm Lambda prints on Fugi archival paper This floor to ceiling installation plundered the Feast archive, a depository of more than 400 found First Communion commemorative pictures from Europe and the Americas (1877-1970). A selection of 108 images enlarged and printed in colour (digital photographic Lambda prints) were presented in a three-row grid format on four walls that literally enveloped and surrounded the viewer - an army of pre-teen girls dressed in white. The anonymous photographic portraits explore and critique the initiatory performance of gender in ritual contexts (both sacred and secular), particularly addressing notions of purity and contamination. These monumentalised images become celebratory markers of an emergent prepubescent sexuality and desire. The fetishised ‘virginal bride’ motif once safely and happily in place, now reaches the challenging excesses of the fantastically bizarre. The size is a renunciation of where these photographs were originally placed, and the spectator confronted by a re-viewing. The sheer scale of the work exposes the physical nature of the First Communion event (both in the church and photographer’s studio) and sets out to deconstruct this important symbolic moment. Female sexuality is not located in a comfortable place … it is not clear where it is … it is not fixed. Confronting the images, two voices emerge in dialogue (wall texts) where amnesia and sharp recall explore the flux of denial and excess. VIDEO INSTALLATION Project Space UCR/ California Museum of Photography, USA Curated by Ciara Ennis The Set Video triptych with continuous sound (projection/two 382 cm monitors)& prayer cushion seating 32 minute, synchronized loop (5 x 5 minutes sequences) This installation explores the authorial nature of the First Communion rituals - rote performances in the Church move seamlessly to mock performances in the studio. The Set draws on the artifice of the recorded climatic moment (fixed image). This video work is a continuous re-enactment of five photographic portraits drawn from the Feast archive, and points to the absent, unseen event that is re-done (staged) for the photographer. The representational conventions that are to be adhered to (as with wedding photography) are exposed simply through a reflexive approach where the children hold their performances in the anticipation of the release. Gender as performance is explored in terms of how boys and girls are expected to behave. Being good and acting as you are told breaks down in each of the five sequences with each child monitoring the other. The sound of a cough, sneeze, whisper or movement of the body reverberates in the studio, breaking and punctuating the monotonous real-time action

Treed

London Arts Board Award to Individual Artists, 1998 Bethnal Green Open Studio, London, UK A hunting term used to describe the process of pursuit. The Dictionary definition: v. 1. trans. To drive to or up a tree; to cause to take refuge in a tree, as a hunted animal; hence Colloq., to corner. Also fig. To put into difficulty or ‘fix'. TREED sets out to examine the persistence and resistance of certain patterns of looking and interaction within family groups. The project draws from archive 8mm home movie footage shot in California between the years 1963-1970. The work uncovers and sets out to make visible the ‘undirected’ footage that was authored by Johnson’s father – ‘the ‘unofficial’ material that her mother mocked, ignored and dismissed as not fitting into the family picture. This paternal gaze considered unrepresentative of the agreed familial narrative, consists of documentation of conifer trees and pursuit of her mother’s image. Scale plays a part in monumentalising the capture of the ‘missed’ image (mother). The quick moving, protesting subject is fixed. Seven filmic frames become photographic objects, displayed in sequenced form (1.2 m h x 1.8 m w). In juxtaposition, the trees are stand-ins for the absent subject (father). The obsessive tracking is emphasised by repetition, and the height of the trees de-monumentalised through scale. What is seen to be important is measured against what is fleeting. Seven small monitors (14”) are sequenced in the space, each showing a different tree, yet looking at the same action

Divers memories project 1. Split Suite 2. Vihta 3. Model House

DIVERS MEMORIES “Muistoja Syvältä is the latest exhibiton by the Divers Memories Project. The imaginations of over seventy artists have been fused with the reservoir of Karelian history and culture at Pielisen Museum. Divers Memories is the outcome of a decade of work by the artist Chris Dorsett at the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. More recently his concept has taken on an international identity as a large-scale research project funded by the Department of Visual and Performing Arts in the University of Northumbria at Newcastle. Muistoja Syvältä is one of a series of exhibitions which the project is initiating museums throughout the UK and Europe.” 15 May – 15 September 1996 1 SPLIT/SUITE: The Making of Finland in Three Movements Collaboration: Christy Johnson and Roz Mortimer Pielisen Museum, Lieksa, Finland 6 min video, 1996 SPLIT/SUITE obliquely refers to Finland’s history of divided territory and moving boundaries. The work was sited in the entrance of main building of the Pielisen Museum. Johnson and Mortimer chose to draw attention to the domestic collection in the main building by using objects such as blonde hair, dough, fish, quilt fabric, and birch for their simple performances to camera. Three ‘movements’ use the structure of repetition and splitting alongside Maame, the Finnish National Anthem. 2 VIHTA Collaboration: Christy Johnson and Roz Mortimer Pielisen Museum, Lieksa, Finland Performance/Intervention in Sauna No. 60, 1996 In Finland the sauna has historically been the place in which women have performed the life-cycle rituals from birthing to washing the dead. Drawing from this history, Johnson and Mortimer chose Sauna No. 60 to site VIHTA. This intervention explored the sauna as a site of transformation and the body’s transition in this context. A performance took place – a photograph taken every 5 minutes – giving evidence to the initiatory experience of experiencing extreme heat and using birch to stimulate the skin. The individual SX-70s were sutured onto the existing metal grill separating the viewer from the sauna space. As one approached, sound was triggered - the transition from pain to pleasure being heard. 3 MODEL HOUSE Pielisen Museum Intervention (main building), 1996 4 TRUSS CDAK Exhibition, Seoul, Korea, 2001 TRUSS questions the relationship between support and vulnerability within domestic structures and draws from Johnson’s intervention (1996) in the ‘Model House’ section of the Pielisen Museum in Lieksa, Finland. The diptych intervention becomes the central image of the triptych

Breaking the Plain 2009

Installation work as part of the event 'Migration Song' MAMÜ Gallery, Budapest, Hungary Event opened by the presentation of a text by Yugoslavian writer and artist Szombathy Bálint Interview ‘Csalad-Barat’, DUNA TV, Budapest, Hungary (Boldizsar Csernak-Risko, Christy Johnson, and Conor Kelly) “As a building type, both rural and urban, the grain elevator has provided a source of inspiration for architects and artists alike. From the European architects who first noticed them at the turn of the century to the generations of American artists who still document them, all have continued to renew the meaning of the elevator through their work. American artists, in particular, developed a certain way in which they recorded the elevator. They emphasized the elevator’s context, whether rural farmland or urban industrial landscape, and its identity as an American object, thereby setting themselves apart from the Europeans who were interested primarily in the building’s form – a quality that transcends cultural boundaries. Both groups of artists, however, strove to extract the spiritual essence of the grain elevator, without altering its integrity as an object, and transformed it from a common vernacular structure to a building of iconic stature.” Aldo Rossi BREAKING THE PLAIN takes as its centre an image of a model – a representation of the generalised form of the rural wood elevator that has been lost over time. The family albums accessible to Johnson offered up numerous and varied photographs of elevators built by her grandfather. His movements across the Great Plains can be plotted via inscription and recall. Working from one of the images in the archive, Johnson has created a flat-pack, collapsible, portable elevator that provides an opportunity for ‘performances’ and narrative constructions. The monumentalized and iconic structure of the elevator is reduced to a domestic scale – photographic and architectural sizing provide the arena for showing, telling, journeying. Filmed on super 8, the flat-pack is assembled and flattened alongside a recording of Johnson and her father discussing the location order of the constructions. This work opens up a triangular dialogue between image, object, and the body and sets out to explore how the vernacular document becomes a site for re-enactment, and draws attention to the instability and fragility of structuring memory

A review of the literature on stepfamilies: An investigation of past and current trends

Stepfamilies are an increasing reality in our society. As recently as 1976, it was estimated that as few as 10% of all U.S. children under 18 lived in stepparent households (Nelson & Nelson, 1982). In 1986 approximately 50% of first marriages were ending in divorce, and 65% of divorced women and 70% of divorced men were remarrying (Glick & Lin, 1986). It is clear that stepfamilies have changed from being an alternative family form to becoming a predominant family form (Duberman, 1975; Glick, 1991; Visher & Visher, 1988,1990) and is the fastest growing form of family in the United States today (Glick & Lin, 1986)

Recovery of critically endangered Nassau grouper (Epinephelus striatus) in the Cayman Islands following targeted conservation actions.

Many large-bodied marine fishes that form spawning aggregations, such as the Nassau grouper (Epinephelus striatus), have suffered regional overfishing due to exploitation during spawning. In response, marine resource managers in many locations have established marine protected areas or seasonal closures to recover these overfished stocks. The challenge in assessing management effectiveness lies largely in the development of accurate estimates to track stock size through time. For the past 15 y, the Cayman Islands government has taken a series of management actions aimed at recovering collapsed stocks of Nassau grouper. Importantly, the government also partnered with academic and nonprofit organizations to establish a research and monitoring program (Grouper Moon) aimed at documenting the impacts of conservation action. Here, we develop an integrated population model of 2 Cayman Nassau grouper stocks based on both diver-collected mark-resight observations and video censuses. Using both data types across multiple years, we fit parameters for a state-space model for population growth. We show that over the last 15 y the Nassau grouper population on Little Cayman has more than tripled in response to conservation efforts. Census data from Cayman Brac, while more sparse, show a similar pattern. These findings demonstrate that spatial and seasonal closures aimed at rebuilding aggregation-based fisheries can foster conservation success

The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the psychosocial well-being of undergraduate students in south India- a cross sectional study

Background: There is an increasing concern on the psychosocial well-being of students especially being vulnerable during times such as the pandemic. Objective were (i) to assess the prevalence of psychosocial issues and coping skills over the lockdown period due to the covid pandemic among undergraduate students in India, (ii) to associate the various factors affecting the study pattern over the lockdown period among the same population. Methods: This was an online cross-sectional study among undergraduate students studying in various south-Indian colleges done during the initial lockdown (May to September 2020). We followed snowball sampling and collected data using google forms with study tools such as, standard revised UCLA loneliness scale and WHO 5 well-being index questionnaire. Our final data of 350 (from 378) was then analyzed using IBM SPSS v21.0 and based on Likert scaling, we graded our responses to assess the severity of loneliness and well-being. Results: The mean age was 23.1±3.31 years and majority of participants belonged to the age group of 21-23 (58.3%). Majority of the participants were pursuing a medical course (62%) and were in their second year of professional course (39.7%). According to WHO-5 scale, 115 (32.9%) had poor well-being and 235 (67.1%) had good well-being and further on comparing it was observed that those with severe loneliness (N=16.7%) had 0.010 times lesser chance of having good well-being (p=0.000) than those who had no loneliness (N=95%). Conclusions: Vulnerable and changing times such as these contribute for alteration in a growing adult’s progress towards well-being.