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It may be election season, but mudslinging isn’t limited to underhanded political campaigns—-there’s plenty of that in the art world, too. And in a new film collaboration between three D.C. photographers and a local curator/performance artist, one artist gets very, very dirty.
The plan for the video started with a photo (top) from prolific music photog Michael Andrade at Baby Bry Bry & The Apologists‘ cassette release show at the Pinch last Monday. Melinda Diachenko (second from right) shared the image on Facebook, and Matt Dunn (a regular City Paper photo contributor) commented with a ♥. Diachenko responded: “Michael & Matt- I’ve always dreamed of being captured by each of you.” She meant it in a figurative sense, we imagine, but Dunn went literal.
“[Diachenko’s comment] had me thinking about the power relationships between photographers and subjects,” he says. “I wanted to subvert that dynamic by imagining Melinda’s dream and using a song from Priests’ Bodies and Control and Money and Power.”
In the video, edited by internationally recognized local photographer Chris Suspect, Diachenko sits on a bench to read. When she’s joined by Andrade, she enters a dream state that finds her “capturing” him and throwing lumps of soggy topsoil at his face. (The soundtrack, Priests’ “Modern Love/No Weapon,” is a contemporary response to David Bowie‘s “Modern Love.”)
Watch the video below, and don’t be afraid to get a little dirt under your nails.
Photo by Michael Andrade