Zoe Beloff Question/Response

1. Why is it important that the viewer be able to interact with some of your installation pieces and films and not others?
2. How is your work that is psychically based related to your personal, autobiographical work? Do you even relate the two?

I was really excited to see Zoe Beloff speak yesterday. I already felt attracted to her work because it delves into the paranormal, psychological, and the unconscious mind. I became a bit disinterested when she was describing her current work. I thought her idea with the five dioramas was really interesting but when I saw the piece with the actors acting out the hysteria it just felt a bit ridiculous. Finally, in the end when she came out and said that everything was made up in her head and Albert Grass was actually "her" I reversed my decision. The idea that all of her work is made up is really interesting to me, especially the fact that many people don't know it's all fake. They might have an idea because a lot of her work is so fantastical but many just take her word for it and believe that the psychoanalytic society is real or that Albert Grass was a real person in the movement. The whole concept behind Beloff's work is manifesting the unconscious and probing what is real and unreal. She tries to create a dialogue with the past, filming scenes that occurred in the 19th century and using the same equipment or film that would have been used then. I really liked the exhibit at Coney Island. I think the diagrams and models for the Dreamland were really interesting. I also enjoyed the films for the Contemporary Psychoanalytic Society. Filming your dreams is another way of probing the distance between real and unreal. Sometimes our dreams can seem so realistic that when we wake up we have a hard time distinguishing what really happened and what didn't. Beloff was able to answer one of my questions in her lecture. I wondered how all of her work related to each other, not knowing that her work that was more based in the psychic world was completely fabricated by her and what she considered a part of herself. She stated that a lot of her work is biographical, just not in the literal sense. She and Albert Grass are the same person, therefore she able to project her views through him and through the rest of the project. Zoe Beloff's lecture was definitely one of my favorite lectures that I have seen at VCU.