THEADORA WALSH


is a writer and video artist who makes moving texts, essays, and fragments. She works with the physicality of language and the tension between speech and its documentation. 


Writing in Gulf Coast, sfmoma Open Space, Apogee, Vol 1 Brooklyn, and Unbag. Criticism in Artforum, KQED arts, Art Papers, BOMB, Electronic Book Review, and Afterimage. And an MFA in Digital Language Arts from Brown University. 


WRITING

Art Criticism
Essays

Prose

I Love Repair


VIDEO WRITING

AAAA, BBBB, CCCC & the rest
Subtitle Drift

Live Word Processing

Aberration of the Translator

Horse Players


TEACHING

The Video Essay
Introduction to Digital Writing

Mobile Media Making


Mark
HORSE PLAYERS
Created in collaboration with Meredith Moran.



Horseplayers engages techniques of historical reenactment and the language of professional sports betting to stage a multimedia three-channel performance. Filmed on an abandoned lot where the Narragansett Park racetrack had once stood, three distinct video feeds feature the artists enacting distinct perspectives: the bettors, the horses, and the jockeys. To provide a slippage in time, and highlight the ongoing nature of history, the artists physically hold up screens onto which the video is projected. Uncannily, the artists are visible both as recorded image and live actor. Two layers of embodiment operate in the piece. As the video feeds are projected across the three screens, the performers provide foley sound effects for each video location and improvise dialogue using word pattern games inspired by the rules of sports betting.

The content of the piece addresses the underlying misogyny in horse racing, drawing inspiration from Diane Crump—the first female jockey to be allowed to participate in professional horse racing. As all jockeys at Narragansett Park were male, save for Crump, and most, if not all, sports bettors would have been men, the artists’ clear femininity challenges conventional expectations of accuracy and authenticity in historical reenactment. Physical labor also comes into the performance through a gendered lens. To honor the tremendous toll racing takes on the body of horses and jockeys, the artists engage in a test of physical endurance by holding up the video screens throughout the course of the performance. This quiet, unassuming, but extremely challenging act, can be seen as a form of feminine labor.