Bitch

“This is what they call the dog days. The Romans were the first ones to call them that, because they said this was the only time werewolves could walk the Earth after sunrise. Dog days indeed. All the time it’s getting hotter. Ice caps melting. California reclaimed by the ocean. Soon they’ll all be dog days, and it won’t even matter because the whole world’s becoming a beach. The Vacation Apocalypse is upon us. It’s just as Louis the Fifteenth said as Rococo turned into rapture:

‘Après moi, les deluge.’

‘After me comes the flood.’”

An hour-long musical manifesto movie, Bitch tells the story of one woman’s attempts to ready herself for a doom she is sure is imminent. Sarah Stevens painstakingly documents her transformation from an unassuming human into Mantis, a rock star personality, a “Cockroach in the atomic crater”, an unapologetic cannibal queen, a woman ready to emerge unscathed from the clutches of certain death. Mantis leads her audience through a meandering meditation on animalism, androgyny, egomania, malice, cannibalism, karaoke, Ken dolls, and the coming werewolf apocalypse. Fantasy folds into reality and reality resembles delusion as it becomes increasingly unclear where manifesto ends and Mantis begins, and more importantly whether Mantis and her creator are indeed one and the same. The artist becomes both her own artwork and her own undoing as inquisitiveness gives way to obsession and making becomes masochism. 

Bitch (Sarah Stevens, HD Video, 55 minutes, 2012)

4 months ago 

Bitch

“This is what they call the dog days. The Romans were the first ones to call them that, because they said this was the only time werewolves could walk the Earth after sunrise. Dog days indeed. All the time it’s getting hotter. Ice caps melting. California reclaimed by the ocean. Soon they’ll all be dog days, and it won’t even matter because the whole world’s becoming a beach. The Vacation Apocalypse is upon us. It’s just as Louis the Fifteenth said as Rococo turned into rapture:

‘Après moi, les deluge.’

‘After me comes the flood.’”

An hour-long musical manifesto movie, Bitch tells the story of one woman’s attempts to ready herself for a doom she is sure is imminent. Sarah Stevens painstakingly documents her transformation from an unassuming human into Mantis, a rock star personality, a “Cockroach in the atomic crater”, an unapologetic cannibal queen, a woman ready to emerge unscathed from the clutches of certain death. Mantis leads her audience through a meandering meditation on animalism, androgyny, egomania, malice, cannibalism, karaoke, Ken dolls, and the coming werewolf apocalypse. Fantasy folds into reality and reality resembles delusion as it becomes increasingly unclear where manifesto ends and Mantis begins, and more importantly whether Mantis and her creator are indeed one and the same. The artist becomes both her own artwork and her own undoing as inquisitiveness gives way to obsession and making becomes masochism. 

Bitch (Sarah Stevens, HD Video, 55 minutes, 2012)

4 months ago 

I ♥ Hawaii

Ah. Young love. Judas Werewolf and California Ken Doll are caught in the throes of it. And as we all know from the song, first comes love, then comes marriage.

 And then comes the Hawaiian honeymoon.

I ♥ Hawaii is a 2012 photo series and a body of work in progress. It documents the honeymoon of Ken and Jude (a Ken doll and a G.I. turned werewolf) as they traverse across Hawaii. An accompanying video (also titled I ♥ Hawaii), is currently underway. 

12 months ago 

Interruptions

Baby, this is the miserable story of my breaking heart, and how I absolutely die without you.

I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry a million times over that I didn’t tell you how much I loved you when I had the chance. I hand processed this film for you because I know how cold it can get spooled into that developing tank, strips of celluloid separated like estranged lovers. I didn’t want my film to feel how I feel without you here. So I spaghettied it into the tank so that the strips of celluloid could cling to each other in that toxic darkness. But when I had processed the film I found that all the places where the film had stuck together- found love? In these places there was no image. They couldn’t bear to reveal all the heartbreak I had tried to capture. So I cut them out and kept them of course, my little pieces of love. But all the rest, the film that had remained, estranged, alone, I spliced all that together. All that loneliness strung together into one long piece of cold celluloid, never even suspended before the projector bulb long enough to grow warm. And that’s what this is. All my sadness, all my loneliness, broken and incomplete and awkward. And all my love, scratched and abused but beautiful. Here are all the flowers I wish you had brought me but never did. Baby, please. All I want is for you to make love to me.

16mm, 2011

12 months ago 

Bitch

“This is what they call the dog days. The Romans were the first ones to call them that, because they said this was the only time werewolves could walk the Earth after sunrise. Dog days indeed. All the time it’s getting hotter. Ice caps melting. California reclaimed by the ocean. Soon they’ll all be dog days, and it won’t even matter because the whole world’s becoming a beach. The Vacation Apocalypse is upon us. It’s just as Louis the Fifteenth said as Rococo turned into rapture:

‘Après moi, les deluge.’

‘After me comes the flood.’”

An hour-long musical manifesto movie, Bitch tells the story of one woman’s attempts to ready herself for a doom she is sure is imminent. Sarah Stevens painstakingly documents her transformation from an unassuming human into Mantis, a rock star personality, a “Cockroach in the atomic crater”, an unapologetic cannibal queen, a woman ready to emerge unscathed from the clutches of certain death. Mantis leads her audience through a meandering meditation on animalism, androgyny, egomania, malice, cannibalism, karaoke, Ken dolls, and the coming werewolf apocalypse. Fantasy folds into reality and reality resembles delusion as it becomes increasingly unclear where manifesto ends and Mantis begins, and more importantly whether Mantis and her creator are indeed one and the same. The artist becomes both her own artwork and her own undoing as inquisitiveness gives way to obsession and making becomes masochism. 

Bitch (Sarah Stevens, HD Video, 55 minutes, 2012)

Bitch

“This is what they call the dog days. The Romans were the first ones to call them that, because they said this was the only time werewolves could walk the Earth after sunrise. Dog days indeed. All the time it’s getting hotter. Ice caps melting. California reclaimed by the ocean. Soon they’ll all be dog days, and it won’t even matter because the whole world’s becoming a beach. The Vacation Apocalypse is upon us. It’s just as Louis the Fifteenth said as Rococo turned into rapture:

‘Après moi, les deluge.’

‘After me comes the flood.’”

An hour-long musical manifesto movie, Bitch tells the story of one woman’s attempts to ready herself for a doom she is sure is imminent. Sarah Stevens painstakingly documents her transformation from an unassuming human into Mantis, a rock star personality, a “Cockroach in the atomic crater”, an unapologetic cannibal queen, a woman ready to emerge unscathed from the clutches of certain death. Mantis leads her audience through a meandering meditation on animalism, androgyny, egomania, malice, cannibalism, karaoke, Ken dolls, and the coming werewolf apocalypse. Fantasy folds into reality and reality resembles delusion as it becomes increasingly unclear where manifesto ends and Mantis begins, and more importantly whether Mantis and her creator are indeed one and the same. The artist becomes both her own artwork and her own undoing as inquisitiveness gives way to obsession and making becomes masochism. 

Bitch (Sarah Stevens, HD Video, 55 minutes, 2012)

I ♥ Hawaii

Ah. Young love. Judas Werewolf and California Ken Doll are caught in the throes of it. And as we all know from the song, first comes love, then comes marriage.

 And then comes the Hawaiian honeymoon.

I ♥ Hawaii is a 2012 photo series and a body of work in progress. It documents the honeymoon of Ken and Jude (a Ken doll and a G.I. turned werewolf) as they traverse across Hawaii. An accompanying video (also titled I ♥ Hawaii), is currently underway. 

Interruptions

Baby, this is the miserable story of my breaking heart, and how I absolutely die without you.

I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry a million times over that I didn’t tell you how much I loved you when I had the chance. I hand processed this film for you because I know how cold it can get spooled into that developing tank, strips of celluloid separated like estranged lovers. I didn’t want my film to feel how I feel without you here. So I spaghettied it into the tank so that the strips of celluloid could cling to each other in that toxic darkness. But when I had processed the film I found that all the places where the film had stuck together- found love? In these places there was no image. They couldn’t bear to reveal all the heartbreak I had tried to capture. So I cut them out and kept them of course, my little pieces of love. But all the rest, the film that had remained, estranged, alone, I spliced all that together. All that loneliness strung together into one long piece of cold celluloid, never even suspended before the projector bulb long enough to grow warm. And that’s what this is. All my sadness, all my loneliness, broken and incomplete and awkward. And all my love, scratched and abused but beautiful. Here are all the flowers I wish you had brought me but never did. Baby, please. All I want is for you to make love to me.

16mm, 2011

About:

Sarah Stevens is a multi-media artist based out of Chicago and Milwaukee. She works in moving image, photography, sculpture, installation, lycanthropy, and other dark arts. She received her BFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago and is pursuing her MFA at University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

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