Euphoria's Hiccups

Video and Sound Installation: Deirdre Logue

Landscape Design: Deirdre Logue, Glynis Logue

Editing and Installation Support: Aleesa Cohene

Audio Installation Support: Rob Butterworth

Euphoria's Hiccups, produced for Land/Slide, Possible Futures joins upwards of 60 short films, videos and installations by the artist Deirdre Logue that investigate the self as subject. This work, like many of her other self portraits, represents Logue's central interests as an artist; the construction of a self-presentational discourse, as it is different from conventional autobiography, the body as material, psychosomatic illness and the richness of our malfunctions. Using 'performance for the camera' as Logue's primary mode of production, her self-portraits investigate what it means to be a queer body in the age of anxiety. Logue's specific interest in repetition and the unconscious makes the installation Euphoria's Hiccups, a tangle of fragmentation, perversion and psychic unrest that sits on the golden mean between excess and deficiency, self-liberation and self-annihilation.

In a deliberate and insistent reversal of traditional understandings of the subject, Euphoria's Hiccups leaves behind a 'master narrative' in favour of a work that is site specific, emotionally driven and intentionally affective. The work literally cross-pollinate's Logue's tendencies towards obsession, addiction and self-destruction with contemporary thinking on healing, landscape and mindfulness. Using her own history of psychic unrest as its anchor and the museums Honey House as its site, Euphoria's Hiccups presented 'the hurting' and 'the healing' in parallel, dismissing the typical hierarchy that place happiness, logic, remedy and physicians at the top and trauma, dysphoria, irrationality and individual suffering at the bottom.

Euphoria's Hiccups was intense, incorporating multiple video screens, still imagery, sound and psychoactive plants to create a productive tension between the interior of the Honey House; an unconscious, perverse, electric hive of nervous energy and the exterior of the house; a conscious, organic, holistic pharmacopeia.

The proposition of the installation suggests that we bring comfort and trauma closer together to better understand their connections and the role they each play in the creation of self and society.

Inside, 17 repurposed video touch screens, ranging in size from 2" to 15" display the artists bitten fingernails worrying into blankets for warmth, hyper nervous gestures and anxious landscapes compete for our attention; 12 small exciter speakers make the Honey House's own timber buzz alongside nightlights filling all available electric orifice's; pink, orange and yellow gels make windows glow.

Outside, the shape of the Serotonin molecule (5-HT), the chemical most often associated with happiness and surprisingly honeycomb like, determines the planting pattern; Scented Geranium, Late Flowering Red Pineapple Sage, Lemon Verbena, Bush Lavender, Willow, Witch Hazel, Cuban Oregano, New England Aster flower and scent the surrounding air, drawing bees from afar for a hallucinating hit and a calming whiff.

Euphoria's Hiccups illustrates the artists lifelong infatuation with performance for the camera and finds kinship in present thinking on feminist social, sexual and political strategies and emerging theory on how the feminist camera and the queer body collide in space to envision the self anew.

Euphoria's Hiccups - Plant Types

Hyssop
Properties: Sedative, cardiac tonic, digestive, expectorant
Medicinal Uses: Calms anxiety, hypertensive, cardiovascular, congestion, antiviral
Parts Used: Flowers, leaf and essential oil

Lavender
Properties: Analgesic, antioxidant, muscle relaxant, sedative, cardiac tonic
Medicinal Uses: Anxiety, depression, headaches, sleep/insomnia, muscle relaxant
Parts Used: Flowers, leaves and stems

Aster
Properties: Anti-anxiety, aromatic nervine, sedative
Medicinal Uses: Mental illness, fever, congestion, headaches, sleep
Parts Used: Flowers, leaves and stems

Willow
Properties: Analgesic, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, immune disorders
Medicinal Uses: Headache/migraine, colds, pain relief
Parts Used: Bark

Witch Hazel
Properties: Analgesic, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, astringent, vulnerary
Medicinal Uses: Skin care, eye strain, aromatherapy
Parts Used: Bark and leaves

Cuban Oregano
Properties: Antioxidant, antiseptic, anti-inflammatory, tonic, stimulant
Medicinal Uses: Fever, heart pain, coughs
Parts Used: Leaves, stems and essential oil

Aztec Sweet Herb
Properties: Aromatic, sweetener, stimulant, expectorant, anti-inflammatory
Medicinal Uses: Coughs, sore throat, congestion, infections, liver health
Parts Used: Flowers, leaves and stems

Scented Geranium
Properties: Analgesic, stimulant, diuretic, sedative, vulnerary
Medicinal Uses: Circulation, depression, stress relief
Parts Used: Leaves

Late Flowering Sage (Pineapple, Cherry, Peach, Raspberry)
Properties: Analgesic, antibacterial, anticancer, antioxidant, aromatic, nervine
Medicinal Uses: Antidepressant, colds, digestion, memory/focus, menopause
Parts Used: Leaves, small stems and flowers

Lemon Verbena
Properties: Aromatic, anti-anxiety
Medicinal Uses: Indigestion, reduces fever, calms nerves
Parts Used: Leaves and flowers

Echinacea
Properties: Antiviral, anti-inflammatory, disease resistance
Medicinal Uses: Immune boost, pain relief, sore throat
Parts Used: Roots, stems and flowers

Cat Mint
Properties: Aromatic, anti-anxiety
Medicinal Uses: Sedation
Parts Used: Leaves and flowers