Caitlin Berrigan: Marshmallow Crash

A new contribution to the Pharmakon Library

Caitlin Berrigan: Marshmallow Crash

http://pharmakonlibrary.blogspot.com/


Marshmallow Crash (digital video, 8 min looping), 2008

Just before the market crash in the Fall of 2008 and the imminent departure of the Bush administration, I sensed impending doom. Perhaps it was facing at last the immense grief of the prior eight years, during which it felt like we could do little more than hold our breath until we were blue in the face. I was compelled to create work based on the insidious, fluffy iconography of the marshmallow and the American landscape. After the crumbling of capitalist monuments in the Fall and the uncertainty of American empire, the metaphors of Marshmallow Crash are oddly prescient.

Marshmallow Crash depicts an American Pie character as she violently confronts an oversized marshmallow amidst an idyllic pastoral landscape. The light, fluffy buoyancy promised by the giant marshmallow is never quite delivered as the character repeatedly impacts the marshmallow and is left marked, exhausted and unfulfilled. - CB