ONSITE OFFSITE PARASITE, pt. 2* ("Armpit, Rocks") HD video, 8:04 on loop 2016 *This is Part 2 of an original two-channel video work. Part 1 is available here: https://vimeo.com/159494252 To see the complete, 2-channel version, it is available here: vimeo.com/162151516 ONSITE OFFSITE PARASITE HD video, 08:14, 2016 ONSITE OFFSITE PARASITE employs ecosystem as metaphor. It derives its title from the American workplace idiom of laboring either onsite, or inside, versus offsite, or outside. Performed, shot and edited by Montgomery, the 2-channel dream-logica video depicts two doppelgängers at work: the artist in character as the metaphysical feminist corporate interloper, Business Witch, and New England's indigenous, parasitic sea lamprey. Both protagonists use their bodies as apparatuses for mark-making; Business Witch embeds fingernails into potted plants, sews hair into conference rooms and impacts pheromones into river rocks. She absurdly utilizes an oily cheese danish pastry (a corporate American staple) as a yonic talisman to calibrate her environment. She is the creative other tasked with using her body as an apparatus for mark making but “fits in” by inserting herself in uncanny ways into the literal skeins of site. The alienation she (the character) reveals in both locations requires the invention of agency to survive within the stagnant waters of late capitalism. The work is also charged with the contemporary ecological paradox of the US's native sea lamprey, Petromyzon marines, Latin for "stone suckers". Pre-western industrialization sea lampreys dwelt amicably within their environments, but now trapped behind industrial dams the animals are unable to complete their anadromous migrations. In modern times, the lampreys have become a menace. Chemical pheromone lampricides are utilized to deter trapped lampreys. While paradoxically, ecologists operate eco-structural fish-ladders to enable the passage and return of wild lampreys. The lampreys' return serves as metaphor as both "parasites" -- Business Witch and Petromyzon marines -- aggressively burrow into their sites for inclusion. Both videos are interconnected; one channel was shot along New England’s Connecticut watershed from June 2015 - January 2016 across the states of Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont as the artist mapped the sea lamprey's migration over the Bellows Falls Hydroelectric Dam and Fish Ladder. The second video was illegally filmed at the Yale Business School in New Haven, CT in January 2016. During the filming, Montgomery was swiftly kicked out for sewing her hair into the pristine Business School's walls. The soundscapes were created via a combination of slapstick foley effects and H2 Zoom field recordings. The videos were shot with Canon EOS 5D Mark II, GoPro Hero 3 and arial drone equipment.
