Janelle VanderKelen // 2021 Portfolio
Statement:
My time-based media practice uses structural elements like speculative narrative and science fiction motifs to envision weird, non-human-centric alternatives to current unsustainable systems of ecological relation. I employ stop-motion and time-lapse animation to make visible the ability of plants and landscapes to move, revolt, and exert influence. These films queer environmentalism by positioning ecological responsibility as community-driven interspecies relationships.
Anti-colonial and anti-racist work entwines directly with ethical environmentalism. Site-specificity allows me to personalize broad environmental questions while addressing ways that eco-justice has often been whitewashed and weaponized. Though the subject matter is serious, I make academic concepts accessible (and even fun) by cultivating humor and generative error within my films.
A Valley Without Trees [Excerpt], 2020
2:08 of 12:00
16mm Film transferred to Video
Janelle VanderKelen
Time-lapse animation makes visible plants’ ability to influence their environment in this experimental speculative narrative about onions and sites of scientific observation. This beginning excerpt focuses on the onion as a nexus of human and geological micro-histories. The onion’s animated exploits intercut with imagery of the VLR Telescope which represents human desire to augment the body’s sensory ability.
Clara: Forever Summer [Excerpt], 2016
1:45 of 8:00
Video
Janelle VanderKelen
The repetitive motions of the pickling process question whether human intervention within the “natural” world is unnatural. The pressure that seals a canning jar culminates with a pop as female-coded labor of food preservation accumulates. In this ending excerpt, the camera is sucked up through the house’s levels while jump cuts and visceral vocals reference uncanny domestic horrors.
The Floating World, 2019
1:07 of 16:30
Video
Janelle VanderKelen
Interactions between humans, plants, and animals in the urban environment highlight the weird position of the city-scape as a fabricated extension of nature that poses unique concerns as the earth warms. The displaced banana slug and ensuing act of unintended violence in this excerpt set into effect a series of fantastical ecological changes.
When The Rabbit’s Nose Twitches, 2018
9:30
Video
Janelle VanderKelen
Elaine de Kooning's musings from the other side.
Ambrosia, 2017
4:10
Video
Janelle VanderKelen
Inspired by the transformations in Ovid's Metamorphoses that linger as explanations for why and how the world is, this piece transposes the notion of transition and transmutation across imagery of hybrid statues and a cleansing of hands with honey- the rejuvenating food of the gods that purportedly grants eternal life.