In The Box: Emma Levesque-Schaefer one is too few and two is only one possibility

Jennifer Lange: What was the genesis of this work? 

Emma Levesque-Schaefer: I was thinking a lot about synthesis and the way it can confound two different ideas and produce something new. I was [also] experimenting with soapmaking, and the process takes these two caustic materials that burn the skin, but when they're mixed, they become something that cleans instead. It made me think more about these oppositional things, like the colors blue and pink, feeling this profoundness of the way [synthesis] can complicate our understandings of materials and concepts. Whatever that feeling was, I used it as an opportunity to float in some research for a while—accumulating all these different references to use later. 

JL: You’ve mentioned Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts as a point of reference, too.

ELS: Ah, yes! Before I started this project, I had just read The Argonauts (probably in under a week) and fell in love with the way that book dealt with portraiture. In one way, the book was a memoir of [Nelson] herself, tying together quotations from notable figures in queer studies and philosophy, but in another, it was a complicated portrait of her then-partner Harry Dodge. The complication felt important to me, and I felt the magic of piecing together a puzzle of different people’s ideas. But I also felt like she was speaking more clearly to a lineage of queer life and family-making. I think I just became so attached to some of her and others’ words that I felt I should include them in the work—as a way of creating a more interconnected web while also attributing my process to the influence others have had on me. 

JL: Your video draws on Prince's Purple Rain, ASMR [autonomous sensory meridian response], and, through the lens of the herb/flower/plant lavender, the world of self-help. How were you thinking about these references in relation to one another. Maybe related to my first question, how did the starting point grow to include these other references?  

ELS: I found myself really drawn to lavender, with its rich history signifying the transgender community in recent years and the gay and lesbian community in the 1970s and 80s. I was certainly interested in Prince from the start. I saw him from a young age as a gay icon, and his use of purple and lavender hues felt like a perfect foundation to build [on]. But as my research was developing, I found myself getting continuously stuck on these repetitive sources describing the movements of the 70s and, feeling such a distance [from] the language and events of that time, I felt like I needed to take a looser approach. I ended up relaxing more into the research, going down deep YouTube rabbit holes listening to white women whisper about lavender plants while they smoothed out towels in sterile rooms. I was really interested in what was drawing me into those videos [even though I was actually] more interested in community-building. I guess I began thinking about that as a binary, self-help as oppositional to the idea of building community, and then, when I came across ASMR, I saw it as this community that built itself [on] the notion of self-care. It felt like another synthesis that could layer with the way I was thinking about color. 

JL: Identity and transformation come to the fore as major themes in this work, albeit in really subtle, complex ways.  What were the challenges of conceptualizing this piece?  Did your ideas change as you started the editing process and putting the material together?

ELS: I think I went into making this work thinking it was going to be this big exclamation about identity and history, and at the start, I think I was trying to force it to take a serious tone. But the more time I spent accumulating references, downloading episodes of How It’s Made and ASMR mouth sounds videos, the more I felt like the seriousness was fading away. Something about that felt really freeing, like the research was forcing me to invent new relationships between the various subjects. I think letting those relationships form and evolve was a way for me to distract myself from the underlying ideas that were motivating me to make the work. And in this way, it was certainly challenging, because I was so worried about the work losing its vital force and just becoming another found video collage. There was this moment, though, when I started reaching out to ASMR artists to talk to them about their process [and] I realized how important the genre was to what I was making, and I think that really guided me.

JL: As we talked about installing this work in The Box, I was really excited when you mentioned the idea of making it an immersive environment/installation with meditation pillows and, for the first time in The Box's history, an aromatic element. How do you see those experiential elements fitting in with the viewing experience? What do you hope viewers will take away?

ELS: Black-box gallery spaces have such a distinct feeling to them, where you kind of disappear into the black space of the screen, and…I wanted to avoid that feeling. I always appreciate when the work leaves some physical space for the body to exist inside the work. [This] work itself has such a textural quality to it I didn't want it to sit at a distance; I want people to feel swallowed up by the space that the work creates on the screen. Making video can always feel kind of numbing to me and I really wanted to bring [out] the tactile and aromatic qualities of what the video is talking about. I think touch and smell can do more for me than any work of art…so, in a way, that bridge has become increasingly important to me in showing this work.

JL: Can you talk a little about how this work fits into your practice?  What are you working on now?

ELS: I see it as something that comes out of a really self-interested period of my practice. I made this at the end of my undergrad [years] and, in some ways, I felt a little breakthrough from the constant fight [between] involving myself [and] trying to completely erase myself from the work. I think it helped me to produce a stronger opinion about how my work acts as a filter for identity. It's also kind of forced to me start thinking [about] different directions [for] my work, opening me up to working in a more exploratory way with materials while also focusing on my practice of writing. It's funny, though, because I find myself so attached to lavender now that I can't escape it with the new work. I've been making a series of paintings [for which] I'm making my own lavender-hued paints and dyes out of household materials and writing a historical fiction play about a gay night club in Nazi Germany called Violetta.