KILLED AND EXTENDED DARLINGS

Kill your darlings, William Faulkner talked about a Writer’s “precious darlings,” those favorite phrases or scenes that-no matter how well-scrutinized-just don’t work in the piece the artist is writing. Faulkner’s advice: “you’ve got to kill them.” The rule implies that the writing product benefits when the first raid, which is initially seen as the best part (the darling), is taken out. Often the writer does not realize that it weakens the content. He is, as it were, “in love’” with his own wording and cannot or will not part with it.

KILLED AND EXTENDED DARLINGS is an audiovisual project in which the once Killed Darlings and Darlings that have made it into an artistic work but deserve more exploration are resuscitated in a series of short videos.

Together with cinematographer Andrea Casetti, Cherish Menzo explores different cinematic formations and collaborations for the individual short videos. To bring the series together on a digital platform.

SUBTLE WHINE

An audiovisual performative landscape embracing the subtle nuances and mechanics of gyration.

Shapes, attitudes, gestures, and meanings morph through stretchy tissue, metallic grinding mouths, strikes and rips of blue waters, crackling latex, tender lullabies, low-frequency sound waves, and the dynamics of Kawina-style music and the act of mimesis moving from one generation to the other.

SUBTLE WHINE invites the audience to question and find agency in gaze, association, and interpretation as they migrate through time, space, material, and sound.

Where do we find ourselves when the boundaries of the conventions and configurations assigned to the black-box and white-cube installation become blurry and disintegrate?

After the first experiment for this series, Clones short 1, in collaboration with artist Christian Yav, cinematographer Andrea Casetti, and composer Blackstrack, SUBTLE WHINE will be the second short in the KILLED AND EXTENDED DARLINGS series.

Where Twerk may have taken more of an overtone in the show JEZEBEL, for SUBTLE WHINE Cherish Menzo wants to explore more deeply ”whining” the thrusting or twisting of the pelvic girdle in a rhythmic pattern. Which, despite the same name, is distinct from the English definition of “whining,” which refers to a long cry of complaint or pain.

In the context of Caribbean culture, whining is a truly regional dance form. It is the natural way Caribbean people dance to the calypso or soca rhythm. It requires no education or no formal learning at a dance school. It is as natural as our language rhythm or speech cadence.