Comparison Between 'Rattles And Cherries' By Shannon Plumb

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The Grand Rapids Art Museum of Michigan is currently displaying a performance art video by artist Shannon Plumb who is based in New York. The white and black short video Rattles and Cherries is one of Plumbs latest works created in 2004, she both directs and stars in her work. Plumbs video works are her own comedic feminist take on the deconstruction of societal critiques of women and everyday people. She is compared to being a mix of Charlie Chaplin, Cindy Sherman, and Claude Cahun. Shannon Plumbs Rattles and Cherries is a low tech black and white short film shot on grainy super 8 film that becomes a digital video. It is displayed on a 56 inch TV and played on a loop, in it Plumb both directs and stars in this performance art film as well …show more content…

The theory of deconstruction is taking to binary oppositions (true/false, male/female, etc.) and comparing them unbiased until there is nothing else to compare which neutralizes them or justifies them as one and the same. In the work we are looking at Rattles and Cherries, Plumb looks at a few oppositions to create this short film. In Rattles and Cherries there are two characters being portrayed one is a sexy comedic chick, the other a mother being distracted by her baby. This is the Beginning of the deconstruction of her characters and her self. She is comparing the opposing ideas of being a mother and sexy, being selfless and selfish. Being a mother a nursing your child is not looked at as being sexy and in this Plumb is trying to bring back her sexiness and not being very successful. She is waring with her self to be selfish to be sexy or be selfless to care for her son. Derrida suggests ‘…we must traverse a phase of overturning. To do justice to this necessity is to recognize that in a classical philosophical opposition we are not dealing with peaceful coexistence of vis-a-vis, but rather with a violent hierarchy (Derrida

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