S/tr:w/EET WALK: A travelogue through an American unconscious and some Cities of its Civil War

DVD Video; Copyright © 2009 Lili White
Sound; Color; Length: 18.53 minutes

“…I kept feeling, deep within, that I was watching a dream that had somehow been taken out of the unconscious and filmed. Those wonderful traveling shoes of a street walker leading me on to places I’ve been to within. The foreign land of magic. The caves that call us all so we can find the core of our being. The market places of slavery which are still in existence today. …the modern Hecate beckoning us on to freedom with those seven rays of light and uplifted torch… rightfully reminding us of important boundaries and the respect due by wearing the slogan, “Don’t Tread On Me” filmed where the horses, incredibly powerful symbols in their own right, are harnessed to carriages helped to solidify within just how dangerous civilization is.
It takes all that raw animal power and forces it to wear so many binding pieces of leather and pull a conveyance around, mostly for amusement. How civilization takes us away from the witches’ hill, from the darkness of caves and enslaves us to seemingly safety-providing collections of high-rise fortresses where not only our life is relegated to something less but our very birthright of being erotic is repressed so that the only thing that can grow is a pornographic plant – a poor substitute at best, a weed at worst.”
— T C Aldrich
 
What innate qualities do shoes convey-especially if found on a prostitute’s walk?An artist who found the shoes used in S/tr:w/EET WALK in Dublin Ireland, incorporated their
 surrounding environment into her video. She then invited a dialogue with her
 work.
My film connects directly to actual events.
Ireland, where many Southerners came from, is the root for many Americans.
After 
getting the shoes by chance, I was scheduled to go South, whose past still carries relevance today: slavery, the Civil War, the fight for Civil Rights,
 and now our first President of color.

Moving between diverse landscapes, seemingly haphazard facts disclose
 historic and mythic connections and connect tangentially. My story of being trailed by a prostitute 
when visiting Ireland, attributes belonging to the goddess Hecate, and traces of
 artists of Irish descendent (Flannery O’Connor / Augustus St. Gaudens) were found
 by chance during this journey with the shoes.

In Irish 
myth and its Cinderella fairy tale there is a world where women have the power and God is a woman.
Public monuments regarding slavery and General Sherman impart the patriarchy 
asserting power. Although the South’s slave trade was abolished; today’s global sex trade 
may be interrogated as modern slavery via feminist texts.
The form of America’s symbol of freedom, the
 Statue of Liberty, has an ancient twin,
 Hecate; the witch, crone Goddess, who led led another Goddess who is ascribed with re-birth, out of the 
Underworld…

Lady Liberty leads our nation to…?

******************

CREDITS

Written, Produced and Directed by Lili White

Featuring Rebecca Louise Tiernan as THE STATUE of LIBERTY and/or HECATE

VOICEOVERS:
Joel Haberli, David Finkelstein, Bryan Wells, Shellita, Eileen White, Rashita Bryant, Joanna Hartell, Lili White

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

  • Shoes Found by Kathryn Maguire; Dublin, Ireland 2009
  • The FOGGY DEW (National Anthem) by Peadar Kearney
  • Knowth archelogical site
    & Howth’s Head (circa 1998); Ireland
  • FAIR, BROWN & TREMBLING (the Irish Cinderella story) collected by John D. Batten in CELTIC FAIRY TALES published 1892
  • The Collective Unconscious: C. G. Jung

MEMORIAL SCULPTURE –  USA:

  • LIBERTY LIGHTING THE WORLD: FreŽdŽric Auguste Bartholdi & Maurice Koechlin and Eugene Violletle-Duc
  • WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN sculptor: Augustus Saint-Gaudens with Robert Treat Paine
    at Manhattan’s Grand Army Plaza,     5th Avenue & 59th Street NY

LOCATIONS in AMERICA’s SOUTH —
Special thanks to DAY CLEAN JOURNEY TOURS:

  • SLAVERY MONUMENT:
    sculptor: Dorothy Spradley;
    ITS INSCRIPTED POEM: Maya Angelou
  • Factor’s Walk (slave trader’s row); SAVANNAH, GEORGIA
  • The Flannery O’Conner House

QUOTES:

  • NY TIMES:7/24/09: WELL-BEHAVED STREET CORNER SCULPTURE – Ken Johnson on the Goddess, HECATE: Theogony of Hesiod – ll. 404-452 & other sources
  • USES OF THE EROTIC: THE EROTIC AS POWER – Audre Lord
  • WHO IS YOUR MOTHER? RED ROOTS OF WHITE FEMINISM – Paula Gunn Allen
  • “Life leads the thoughtful man” – I CHING #13
  • “…for we walk…” – St. Paul: 2 Corinthians 5:7
  • “…the high soul burns on to light men’s feet…” – inscription on SHAW MEMORIAL
  • “Hazel Motes…” from WISE BLOOD – Flannery O’Connor
  • GEORGIA ON MY MIND: Stuart Gorrell & Hoagy Carmichael

FILMS:

  • excerpt from LEGGY REDHEAD by Rebecca Louise Tiernan
  • Homage to 8 1/2 – Frederico Fellini; with Eddra Gale as La Saraghina

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