Love has been co-opted by religion, politics, science, environment and death
making its meaning meaningless.
Love is a story, a product, a lifestyle, a religion… an image.
Still, today we have no idea what it means.
“What is Love?
is the most asked question on Google…
next to “What is Google?”
Love has been co-opted by religion, politics, science, environment and death making its meaning meaningless.
Love is a story, a product, a lifestyle, a religion… an image. Still, today we have no idea what it means.
Global connection has triggered a fear that has created deeper connections to race, religion, gender and borders – building walls that isolate us from our current social reality. We are all connected, yet this connection is ironically making us disconnected.
Every place has a story, each religion has a face of love, each person tells a different story that reflects the same thing. How do we build a common thread in a world set on ideals rather than reality?
“Is this love?” is a documentary art project following artist Kate Hollett & her team team as they crisscross the globe in search of a common connection. This video web series is a compendium of stories, faces and feelings from diverse parts of the world, where individuals share emotionally to the camera in their own language.
Each location is a story made of many stories affected by social and media experiences. Voice-over and text will fill in the whole story of each place adding the context and effects, and core issues. The camera will follow the process. The tension comes from the vulnerability of its participants. Sometimes there are invitations for coffee, hugs, tears, sometimes someone spits, and sometimes you are threatened. The result always ends up revealing pain, separation, disconnection.
“I’m lovin it”
“is This Love?”
It is not sweet or romantic. It is subversive. It’s a slow build made up of mini stories meant to shake your ideas of ‘the other’, feel the loss of humanness and crave for something more.
Kate Hollett is a seasoned explorer with roots in Toronto, her current home in Berlin, Germany. Exhibiting and working abroad including in New York, Paris, Barcelona, Belfast, Israel & Palestine. Her “I Love You” paintings are in the collections of Former President Bill Clinton and installation artist Christo. Her video work has been featured at the L.A. Short Film Festival and won “Best in Show” at the Detroit International Art Video Festival at MONA (Museum of New Art).
You can read about her work in publications including Habitat and Habitus; Kinaesthetics and Synaesthesia featuring her work on disconnection, and a German academic book featuring her experimental “Class of Love”. Her videos are used in the study of emotional anthropology at Queen’s University in the UK. Kate recently completed her first book entitled “Love, Media, Art & Science: The Fiction of Relationships”.
Kate has lectured at the Art Gallery of Ontario, OCAD University, Queen’s University, UK, Frei Universität, Humboldt University in Berlin and Leuphana University where she created an experimental multi-media course studying Love. (For more info. katehollett.com)
The Plan