View Elektra Day - Last Nights:
https://holihollyday.github.io/fixityequalsdeath/art/ElektraDayLastNights.html
The first recorded use of a red carpet to honor the arrival of a celebrated person is in the play Agamemnon by Aeschylus, first performed in Athens in 458 BC. Upon King Agamemnon’s return home from the Trojan War, his wife, Clytemnestra, spreads out expensive dyed fabrics for him to walk upon in his war-muddied boots. Little knowing she is planning violent revenge, he reluctantly walks along the precious cloth into his home, despite the hubris of such an act. Once inside, he is horrifically murdered while Cassandra, the prophetess he has brought from Troy as a war trophy, stands before the carpet in a trance, screaming about the fate that awaits them. Then she walks up the red carpet, to what she knows will be her certain death. This is the source material for the yearly ritual of the Oscars pre-show.
Elektra Day - Last Nights is the posthumous multimedia archive of a fictional singer, presented through the website of an obsessive fan unwilling to accept her tragic death. Drawing on both the Greek tragedies and the history of celebrity breakdowns, a series of texts, videos, sound pieces, and images work together to paint a picture of Elektra’s life, work, and death. As an ever-changing pop simulacrum, Elektra functions as a proxy for my own personal demons, an expression of rage turned inward, fictionalizing from experiences of being female, queer, and mentally ill in the midst of the self-destructive serenade of late capitalism.
Elektra Day - Last Nights was on view as an installation at the Center for Book & Paper Arts in Chicago, IL in May 2015. An online version ( https://www.elektra-is-alive.com/ )was released in 2019 as a part of Fixity = Death, a pavilion of The Wrong digital art biennale.
This project was created with the help of many people, for which I am extremely grateful. In addition to the performance, composition, camera, and editing work done by me, various contributions were made by the following phenomenal people:
Performances: Dakota Loesch, Maggie Kubley, Emily Nejad, Amanda Fink
Music: Dakota Loesch, Celine Neon (Maggie Kubley, Emily Nejad), Ryland Barton, Fee Lion (Justina Kairyté)
Photography and Video: Dakota Loesch, Joseph Windows to Sky, Julia Dratel, BJ Allen, Andrew Cutler, Justin McClain, Matthew Haywood
Dog Wrangling: Lee Stark, Alicia Ciuffini
Elektra Day - Last Nights was made with the support of my Patreon contributors. You can view the Patreon page here.
Many thanks to C33 Gallery to providing me with their space for a two-week durational performance / installation, THE NEXT GREAT AMERICAN POP ICON WILL SPRING FULLY FORMED FROM THE HEAD OF ZEUS, during which I developed this character and some of this project's content.
The Next Great American Pop Icon Will Spring Fully Formed From the Head of Zeus
C33 Gallery, October 30 - November 14, 2014
THE NEXT GREAT AMERICAN POP ICON WILL SPRING FULLY FORMED FROM THE HEAD OF ZEUS was a durational, sculptural performance through which I developed the character of Elektra Day, a fictional pop star inspired by both the pantheon of popular music icons and the tragedies of classical Greece. (The biography and creative output of this character would go on to be the basis of the multimedia project Elektra Day - Last Nights.) I spent hours in the gallery each day, improvising elements of the character: how she dresses, does her hair, paints her face, carries her body, speaks, sings, dances, poses, writes, breathes, thinks. This performative sketching process was also constantly filmed and reviewed as I manipulated myself as live sculpture, using costume, set, prop, makeup, movement, and sound. Images by Sid Branca, BJ Allen, and Julia Dratel.