Slap and Tickle 

Slap and Tickle Single channel video installation  17.17 min.    2014

Slap and Tickle is a  structuralist video about the complexity of relationships and about mutability and change in general. In close framing, mouths come in and out of focus either biting or kissing the screen. The sequence of bites and kisses is established by translating the Heraclitus quotation, "Everything flows and nothing abides, everything gives way and nothing stays fixed," into its ASCII eight bit binary equivalent. Each 1 is translated into a bite, each 0 as a kiss yielding 572 edits in the main body of the video. 

The title refers to British euphemism for foreplay or playful juvenile flirting and points towards the close proximity and ready transformation of care into criticism, affection into annoyance, sex into violence, and love into hate.  To counter the possible over-determination of the title steering viewers towards considering the video only in terms of  amorous relationships, the introduction to Slap and Tickle follows the visual structure of the title sequence from the Brady Bunch season 4.  This readily recognizable trope serves as a prompt to guide the viewer to consider the mutability of familial as well as amorous relationships.