Is This What You Were Born For (1989)

Abigail Childs series IS THIS WHAT YOU WERE BORN FOR is one of the most assured and important projects to have emerged over the last decade Constructing from and subverting a wide galaxy of source materials these films are archeological digs into the very stuff the conceptions we are born into Child decomposes the materials and gestures that would compose us The films are charged with a startling and playful musicality and poetic and rigorous compression Each image and sound cuts deep and works over time containing hidden and unhidden detonations working against the manufactured ambush that images have in store Agile dances through treacherous debris they negotiate an obstacle course of polar anatomies zigzagging with corkscrew twists and nuclear splits a gambol against the hazards