Lauren Covey
Bio: Lauren Covey creates thought-provoking work in video, sound installation, and performance. Her work pulls from the public and private worlds of psychoanalysis, self-help literature, and therapy to produce enigmatic narratives using appropriated material to create a series of invented self-reflective characters. Her process of making is not dissimilar to a torrid love affair constantly occupying her mind, generating more fiction and fantasy as her mood is strung along, oscillating between ecstasy and self-doubt. Her work embodies and attempts to embrace her self-consciousness, but continues to have a stinky aura, like a repellant that makes people run towards a pony’s turd.
Thesis Exhibition
Lithium, 2021
Artist Statement: The recording studio is an important part of my studio practice. After concocting elaborate narratives, I head there to record the audio and video content for my work. This part is unscripted, an improvisatory experience that helps create mythological worlds meant to be understood by the public through their abstracted version.
Within the isolation booth, you can hear all the noises that you and your body create. Sounds of pages turning, a jaw popping are all perceptible within these walls, along with awkward pauses, the inevitable mistakes, and moments when things go wrong, “Oops.”
Despite feeling safe in the studio, self- critical tendencies arise. I politely decline the option to edit out embarrassing signals of vulnerability. A jaw popping, for instance, is a signal of TMJ which reveals something that happens in the night: a person grinding their teeth. This means that this person is stressed out, which means that they can’t handle modern-day life, nor can they give good head without a sacrifice. To shun people with TMJ is not a known bias, but it symbolizes imperfection and no one wants to be reminded of their own imperfections.
My inner voice has already accepted society’s invitation for censorship and it remains folded into my sense of self. My preoccupation with containment keeps my focus divided and takes me away from the present moment. My failed effort to keep these outbursts a secret, emotional leakages leave me exposed. This is my body's way of fighting against containment. I want to eliminate my internal voice that shouts: don’t cry .. don’t cry .. don’t cry .. (sniffle) .. hold it in .. swallow... And oh it would be horrible if someone says .. are you OK? If I could, I would make crying cool and transform the negative cry baby stigma into a cry babe badge of honor.
L to R: Lithium (13:00 minutes, Monitor, video and sound, 2021); Lithium (13:00 minutes, Monitor, video and sound, 2021 (still image)); Lauren Covey (left), Paula Lycan (right); Lauren Covey (left), Paula Lycan (right)
