8 MILLION

by Abigail CHILD
1992 / 16mm / color / sound / 1S / 25' 00

with music by Ikue Mori. Musicians: Catherine Jauniaux (vocals), Zeena Parkins (accordian), Hahn Rowe (violin) and Ikue Mori (percussion)

“Experimental music and eroticism swirl about each other in Shiver, the second of the 8 Million stories which can be found in this lively and continuing collaborative ‘album’. In Kiss of Fire , Child reworks images from her squisy TV soap Swamp (1991), to punctuate romantic cliche.” Selected for New York Film Festival Video Visions (1993) Short songs chart erotic tales in an urban topology. Includes FISHTANK, SHIVER, KISS OF FIRE, 8 MILLION WAYS TO DIE, and FAINT CLUE. The myths of popular culture—romance and TV soaps— provide the motifs for the work which restructures memory-image-fragment to foreground the body against a mechanized landscape. In the shape of small stories, 8 Million rewrites women's drama. The artists have worked together previously as a part of VIDEO MUSICA held at The Garage NYC in the fall of 1989, in which some of these songs were performed ‘live’. The project stresses the potential for image to take its place as a musical component, to be a member of the band. And on occasion to be the basis of the score: image as conductor, the music performed to the video.



No print in distribution