Rhapsody Tentacular Project Description

Spinners is a series of live-streamed dramatic reenactments of stories about hurricanes and tornadoes that were offered to us by women we met on a journey across the southern U.S. We focused on women witnessing these unbelievable phenomena, so that we might question the ways in which women are often considered unreliable narrators of their own experiences. The stories each tell of unusual sightings--from birds collecting in the eye of a storm, to the force of wind sucking bricks apart on a building. The dramatic reenactments take the form of playful, paper cut-out puppet shows, with both of us streaming layers of the scenes from separate locations and time zones. Emily, an amateur pole dancer, embodies the spinning winds as she performs the role of the storms, invoking the power of weather and the gendered frame through which weather phenomena are often discussed. Why were hurricanes named only after women for decades? Why do we tend to consider nature a force acting in opposition to civilization, to be adapted to or dominated? Through this work we hope to gain some insight into our experience of the environmental crisis.

Jessica Mensch's work straddles painting, video, music, stage design, and installation, inviting contemplation between these spheres of production and the position of women within them. Mensch received her MFA from Hunter College in 2019 and currently teaches in the Art Department at St.FX University in NS. She has received support from the Canada Council for the Arts and was shortlisted for the RBC Painting Prize. She has participated in national and international residencies and exhibitions. Mensch also works collaboratively with artists Emily Pelstring and Katherine Kline to produce Sistership TV, a web series that explores topics such as telepresence and animal communication.

Emily Pelstring is an artist and filmmaker, and is an Associate Professor in the Department of Film and Media at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Her work across media installation, experimental film, and performance situates the moving image and sound in relation to overlapping concepts drawn from science, magical traditions, and religious texts. Her artistic inquiries bring together questions around the contingency of the cinematic spectacle: the interdependence of space, bodies, electricity, apparatus, and cultural perceptions. Her projects have been supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council, and exhibited internationally in museums, galleries, DIY spaces, and festivals. Emily is engaged in ongoing artistic collaborations with Jessica Mensch and Katherine Kline, her “sister-crones” in the trio The Powers, and was a core organizer of an international symposium called The Witch Institute, which brought together scholars, artists, and practitioners to explore the figure of the witch in art and media.