"Pulsing with the murky horror and red-light glow of cult films like Liquid Sky and Videodrome, Sue de Beer and Laura Parnes's video Heidi 2 has been one of the most inspired works of art to arrive in New York this season."

–Michael Cohen, Flash Art

Heidi 2

All works by Laura Parnes
and Sue De Beer

Two-channel Video Installation, Mixed Media, 1999-2000, 30 min.

Shown as solo installation at Deitch Projects, NYC, LACE, LA, and in the exhibition Melodrama, at ARTIUM, Centro-Museo Vasco de Arte Contemporáneo,  Museo de Arte Contemporáneo, Galizia Vitoria, Granada, Spain

Heidi 2, produced in collaboration with Sue de Beer, is a feminist revision of Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy's 1992 video, Heidi.

This intentionally low-end production illustrates the way B-movie aesthetics can be employed ironically to comment on cultural depravity. This mother/daughter story reclaims patriarchal abjection through reinterpretation. The work is introduced through a disturbingly humorous birth scene. From there, the pair's daily life gradually moves from bulimic contests and sexual play to technologized degradation. This relationship implodes in the final scene when the daughter, Heidi 2, surgically implants a TV set into her own abdomen with her mother's help. The TV contains a live feed of herself.

Aesthetically, the cold Cronenberg-esque silences distill the horror of transmitted self-objectification particular to the adolescent female.

CREDITS
Cast
Sue de Beer as Heidi 2
Leonardo DiCaprio as Peter
Eric Heist as Leonardo DiCaprio
Laura Parnes as Heidi 1
Susan Schnell as the Nurse
Guy Richards Smit as Grandpa
Crew
Robert Boyd: Sound
Jesse Bransford: Set Stylist
Lorenzo De Los Angeles III: Puke Stylist
Jonah Freeman: Body Double
Kara Hammond: Sound
Ian Jehle: Set Stylist
Laure Leber: Still Photography & Electrician
Adam Putnam:Still Photography & Camera
Eric Schnell: Birth & Barf Engineer
Amanda Williamson: Puppet Master
offline edit@ The Outpost
on line edit @ The Wexner Center
Support Provided by The Wexner Center Media Arts Program, The Ohio State University

SPECIAL THANKS TO
Amy Ben Ezera, Lital Cohen, Clarissa Dalrimple, John Dydo, Matt Greene, Mark Fields, Jenny Martin, Kel O'Neill, Bob Pellegrini, Peter Scott, Einat Sidi, Carol Singer, Allison Smith, Maria Troy, Banks Violette, Mark Wenger, Ivan Witenstein, and Justine Wheeler.