Paulette Phillips "It's about how people judge appearance"
Lola 8, Winter 2000 - 2001

by Catherine Osborne

Paulette Phillips' video loop, "It's about how people judge appearance" is really hard to watch even though it's only a minute long. I watched for only 30 sec­onds before I left the room. The clip shows a woman walking head first into the corner of a concrete building, spew­ing blood from her temple, and then dropping like a rock to the ground in a cold stare. The image is repeated from various angles, and each whack to the head is punctuated with a soundtrack of a skull cracking. I left at that point, which begs the question why this clip was so intolerable when images just like it are on TV each night? I called the artist. Phillips: "I think it's psychologi­cally intense because it's self-inflicted. It isn't victim-based brutality." She also told me that if I had stayed to the end, I would have seen the woman pick herself up, and give a defiant glance to the cam­era before moving on. When I heard that, I thought I'd probably watch the video again next time, which also means, like television, happy endings can dull your senses.