Cecelia Condit
{{Short description|American video artist (born 1947)}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Cecelia Condit
| image = Cecelia Condit.jpg
| alt = Purple-tinted photograph of a smiling, middle-aged white woman in front of a forest background.
| caption = Condit in June 2017
| birth_date = {{birth date and age|1947|12|15}}
| birth_place = Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
| death_date =
| death_place =
| other_names =
| occupation = Video Artist and Professor Emerita at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee{{cite web |title=Faculty & Staff Directory |url=https://uwm.edu/arts/directory/condit-cecelia/ |website=Peck School of the Arts |publisher=University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee}}
| years_active = 1981–present
| known_for = Short film, surrealist film
| notable_works = {{ubl|Possibly in Michigan|Beneath the Skin|Not a Jealous Bone}}
}}
Cecelia Ann Condit{{cite web | url=https://www.condit-family.com/ps50/ps50_175.html | title=Cecelia Ann Condit (Private, Female) }} (born December 15, 1947) is an American video artist. Condit's films are noted for their attempts to subvert traditional mythologies of female representation and psychologies of sexuality and violence.
Condit has received awards from the Guggenheim Foundation, American Film Institute, National Endowment for the Arts, Mary L. Nohl Foundation, Wisconsin Arts Council and National Media Award from the Retirement Research Foundation. Her work has been shown internationally in festivals, museums and alternative spaces and is represented in collections including the Museum of Modern Art in NYC and Centre Georges Pompidou Musee National d'Art Moderne, Paris, France. In 2008, Condit had her first solo show exhibition at the CUE Art Foundation in New York.{{Cite web|url=http://cueartfoundation.org/cecelia-condit|title=Cecelia Condit|website=CUE Art Foundation|language=en-US|access-date=2019-08-13}}
Early life and education
Condit was born in Philadelphia on December 15, 1947. She studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania. She received a BFA in sculpture from the Philadelphia College of Art and a MFA in photography from Tyler School of Art at Temple University.
Career
Condit served as professor and director of the graduate program in the Department of Film, Video, Animation, and New Genres at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.{{Cite web|url=https://uwm.edu/arts/directory/condit-cecelia/|title = Cecelia Condit | Peck School of the Arts| work=Peck School of the Arts }} Her work received renewed attention in 2015 after her short film Possibly in Michigan was posted to Reddit.{{Cite web|url=https://www.reddit.com/r/creepy/comments/34ejws/possibly_the_creepiest_thing_ive_ever_watched/|title = Possibly the creepiest thing I've ever watched|date = 30 April 2015}} Four years later, an audio clip from the same film became a viral hit on TikTok, with over 22,000 iterations created as of July 2019.{{Cite web|url=https://garage.vice.com/en_us/article/wjvv8z/cecilia-condit-video-art-tiktok|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190722225957/https://garage.vice.com/en_us/article/wjvv8z/cecilia-condit-video-art-tiktok|url-status=dead|archive-date=July 22, 2019|title = Cecelia Condit's Video Art is Going Viral on TikTok| work=Garage |date = 22 July 2019}}
=Works=
== ''Beneath The Skin'' ==
{{Main article|Beneath the Skin (film)}}
Beneath the Skin is her first work. A short film, it follows a woman's thoughts and musings towards a recent incident in which she discovered that her boyfriend was hiding the body of his ex-girlfriend in his closet.
It is based on a real-life incident that occurred in Condit's life when she dated Ira Einhorn, also known as the Unicorn Killer. Ira had murdered his ex-girlfriend, Holly Maddux, and hidden her corpse in his closet.{{Cite web |date=2020-04-09 |title=Who Was the 'Unicorn Killer'? How a 1960s Activist-Turned-Murderer Evaded Extradition for 23 Years |url=https://www.insideedition.com/who-was-the-unicorn-killer-how-a-1960s-activist-turned-murderer-evaded-extradition-for-23-years |website=Inside Edition}} Condit, who began dating Einhorn, never found Maddux's corpse due to being on medication that hindered her sense of smell.{{Cite web |last=Breda |first=Alix |date=2017-11-29 |title=Cecelia Condit's Body of Becoming: Women and the Dark Forest of Dreams |url=https://www.anothergaze.com/cecelia-condits-body-of-becoming-women-and-the-dark-forest-of-dreams/ |access-date=2023-09-19 |website=Another Gaze: A Feminist Film Journal |language=en-US}}
Videography
| class="wikitable"
!Title |
| 1981
|Beneath the Skin{{Cite web |last=Popkin |date=2021-11-27 |title="Beneath The Skin" by Ceclia Condit combines true crime and art in an unforgettable way |url=https://boingboing.net/2021/11/27/beneath-the-skin-by-ceclia-condit-combines-true-crime-and-art-in-an-unforgettable-way.html |access-date=2023-10-01 |website=Boing Boing |language=en-US}} |
| 1983 |
| 1987
|Not a Jealous Bone |
| 1996
|Suburbs of Eden |
| 1990/2008
|Oh, Rapunzel |
| 2003
|Why Not a Sparrow |
| 2004
|All About a Girl |
| 2005
|Little Spirits |
| 2008
|Annie Lloyd |
| 2015
|Pulling Up Roots |
| 2016
|Some Dark Place |
| 2017
|Pizzly Bear |
| 2019
|We Were Hardly More Than Children |
| 2020
|I've Been Afraid |
| 2021
|AI and I |
Condit considers the following films to be part of the "Jill Sands trilogy", which refers to three of her films which star the actress Jill Sands; Beneath the Skin, Possibly in Michigan, and Not a Jealous Bone.{{cite web | url=https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3379&context=dissertations_2 | title=ScholarWorks :: Login}}
Select Installations
Condit has created a number of video installations including:
- First Dream After Mother Died (2010), a three-channel video installation that was exhibited at the North Dakota Museum of Art{{Cite web|title=North Dakota Museum Of Art {{!}} past 2010 cecelia condit|url=https://www.ndmoa.com/past-2010-cecelia-condit|access-date=2022-01-04|website=www.ndmoa.com}}
- Within a Stone's Throw (2012), a three-channel video installation exhibited at the Nevada Museum of Art,{{Cite web|title=Cecelia Condit: Within a Stone's Throw|url=https://www.nevadaart.org/art/exhibitions/cecelia-condit-within-a-stones-throw/|access-date=2022-01-04|website=Nevada Museum of Art|language=en}} the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, and the Burren College of Art in Ireland{{Cite web|title=PHOTOGRAPHY|url=https://www.ceceliacondit.com/photography|access-date=2022-01-04|website=Cecelia Condit|language=en-US}}
- Tales of Future Past (2017), a two-channel video installation exhibited at the Lynden Sculpture Garden{{Cite web|date=2016-07-12|title=Women, Nature, Science: Cecelia Condit: Tales of a Future Past|url=https://www.lyndensculpturegarden.org/exhibitions/women-nature-science-cecelia-condit-tales-future-past|access-date=2022-01-04|website=www.lyndensculpturegarden.org|language=en}}
Personal life
Condit has two grown sons, Schuyler Vogel, the chaplain at Carleton College, and Lloyd Vogel, chief executive officer at Garage Grown Gear.
References
{{Reflist}}
- University of Wisconsin faculty profile
- Tamblyn, Christine. “Significant Others: Social Documentary as Personal Portraiture in Women’s Video of the 1980’s.”
- Mellencamp, Patricia, “Uncanny Feminism: The Exquisite Corpses of Cecelia Condit”, Framework, vol. 32, no. 3:104-22.
- Doug Hall and Sally Jo Fifer's “Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art.”
External links
- {{IMDb name|4623975}}
- [https://www.ceceliacondit.com/ Official website]
{{Authority control}}
{{Video art}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Condit, Cecelia}}
Category:American women experimental filmmakers
Category:Artists from Philadelphia
Category:Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts alumni
Category:Temple University alumni