Yawn Courtney Stricklin
   
I was talking to a friend on my cell phone, when he paused our conversation long enough to yawn. *** Based only on hearing his yawn, without being anywhere near him and without any delay, *** I yawned in response. This was overwhelming. *** I couldn't believe that from more than twenty miles away someone else's yawn had made me yawn. *** I began to investigate my yawning habits. It turns out that I yawn all of the time, and according to my boyfriend, I never cover my mouth. In fact, I usually don't even notice that I'm yawning, which had, until recently, left me blissfully unaware of my open-mouthed rudeness. *** Other than that, my investigation proved inconclusive. There is little concrete knowledge about why people yawn, and even less information about why other people yawn in response. There are, however, many sociological associations about what a yawn represents. Public opinion, etiquette, and social morals have often determined that people yawn when they are tired or bored. *** Specifically, within the context of an art gallery, one might presume that a yawn would signify a negative response to the displayed work, that a viewer is disinterested *** and unengaged. *** So I made a video of myself yawning and installed it in a gallery full of other people's art. *** The resulting color video presents a four-and-a-half-minute second loop of me staring directly into the camera lens, yawning. The image shows my face, head, and shoulders standing against a white wall, similar to the walls of the gallery occupied by the finished video. I yawn nine times during the course of the original take which has been looped indefinitely. This, and the fact that the yawns are only three seconds apart guarantees that the viewer is likely to respond. The video portion of the piece *** was completed in November of 2005. I recruited a friend to operate the camera with the goal of recording as many yawns as possible. This turned out to be a fairly simple task, because every time that I yawned into the camera, she did as well. Then, after she yawned, I easily yawned in return. Which of course meant that she yawned again, *** which of course meant that I also would yawn again, and so on, and so on, for almost five minutes. *** From the beginning, my interest was in the affect of the yawn, in its ability to spread. *** I also wanted to challenge the meaning of the yawn as a gesture, to deconstruct its supposed disrespect. My goal was multifaceted, to make people yawn while making them think about yawning. Moreover, I wanted this piece to exist in the context of other work, so that viewers *** would be yawning in a supposedly inappropriate space, in a situation *** that would not normally accept such a reaction. Despite the fact that my interest with yawning started with the sound of my friend's yawn, I decided to omit sound, *** guaranteeing that the response of the viewer would be entirely visual *** , that they could not perceive the work *** prior to seeing it with their own eyes. Ideally, someone would walk into the gallery, and before seeing or knowing of my piece, they would see someone yawn. They would make a judgment about that yawn *** which would soon after be challenged by their own similar participation. The final result would be the inappropriate spectacle of people continuing to walk through the gallery yawning, *** as a result of viewing the video, which would of course cause those around them to yawn as well. This would result in a chain reaction of yawns, an echo, no longer dependant on the physical sight of the installation. This is where the aim of the work is physically manifested *** , in the participation of the audience as opposed to the image of my yawning face. In order to emphasize the importance of this contagion, the video is installed in such a way as to downplay its significance when compared to the spectacle surrounding it. It is seen on a very small, eight-by-ten screen, and rear projected so that the video to be seen as *** a secondary element to the yawning viewer. Ultimately, the “art work” isn't the video. Yawn Video was recently exhibited as part of SuperSonic at the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery of Barnsdall Park. Tucked away in a corner room, invisible from the main entrance, *** the installation successfully surprised viewers with its not-so-subtle effect. Yawns traveled throughout the event, a seventy-artist show of M.F.A. graduates from all of the participating Los Angeles art schools. Viewers yet to experience the video firsthand saw the yawns of others, and then experienced the cause for themselves as they progressed to my work, and a large gallery, packed with art, was home to the engaged faces of a yawning crowd. You might even say that my intentions were met with open-mouthed applause. *** Thanks to everyone who contributed to the production of this piece…
A life-long Angelino, Courtney Stricklin grew up in Glendora, California. She moved to Eagle Rock (Los Angeles) in 1999 to attend Occidental College for her B.A. and has continued to reside in the area since. She just recently graduated from Otis College of Art & Design with her M.F.A. and is excited about pursing her art practice outside of academia. While Courtney would never have guessed that her future would be in the arts, it came as no surprise to her highly artistic family. Courtney's mother is a muralist and high school art teacher, one of her brothers is a cinematic art director as well as an accomplished painter/muralist, and both her oldest brother and father are talented draftsman. Courtney herself did not take an art class until her freshman year of undergrad and was then immediately converted to a life in the visual arts. |
