I think "what's inside a girl? is my favorite of these for it's nod to the slasher movies in the /slash/ section, and it's horror movie music. It's almost like a trailer to a movie that doesn't exist. The "how to tell a love story in a time of war" have a more turn-of-the century feel, the clips culled from a 1923 nature video about bees and spiders. "the honey machine" video pulls from some weird public domain family film footage of a taxidermy collection. "dirty blonde' is old shampoo videos and an infectious song. The process takes a while, sometimes an entire afternoon of preparing still slides, collection images, splicing films, and waiting for things to upload. (toward the end of the month I have terrible internet since I use my phone as a hotspot and run low on high-speed data.) Then there is getting things to match timing-wise with the music or recorded reading. Friday, I made a video to promote the library and ended up working from around 6pm til 3am. It's not easy, but I really love the results. And again, it keeps me from doomscrolling the news for awhile.
And of course, there is something of collage about it. I find myself randomly scrolling through public domain offerings and saving bits for later videos, much in the way I tear and cut paper things for collages. Or even saving bits on my computer for digital manipulations for art or covers. Different mediums, but the same impulse. I also appreciate weird matchups--the strip-tease in "what's inside a girl?" combined with the creepy still photos and music. Plath's re-worked cento lines and the dizzying taxidermy footage. Looking toward fall, I have a couple video-centric projects plotted, including a series of videos for the "swallow" poems--almost a digital chapbook but with videos instead of still-art. I'm excited to get to work on this, plus maybe some smaller projects that go with other things ( I recorded the above audio bit for the summer house last weekend that accompanies it on the website.)I love that this is a new tool in my arsenal and am curious what will come of it. And perhaps, if I can master After Effects, those animated poems are just a little bit closer..)