Poem for E.L. — LA Artcore

Poem for E.L. (or, Processing the Violence of Imposed Narratives)

Maya Gurantz

2015-2023

Gallery hours: Thursday–Sunday, 12-4 pm

The artist performs “Excavations” every Sunday from 1-2 pm

Opening reception with a 6 p.m. performance on Nov. 4th, 5-8 pm

All activities take place at: 120 Judge John Aiso St., Los Angeles, CA 90012

This body of work in video and dance investigates the last known physical movements, captured by elevator surveillance, of a woman hours before her death in a downtown hotel water tank. Released by LAPD in the effort to identify the body, this footage went viral, triggering thousands of online conspiracy theories, schlock horror, and true crime shows—and becoming another legend of a woman coming to a mysterious and violent end in Los Angeles.

When artist Maya Gurantz first encountered the story, she predicted how it would be compressed into these narrative genres, which all stage patriarchal order—briefly threatened by monstrous chaos—ultimately being restored. 

In response, Gurantz was moved to learn the physical movements from the surveillance video, second-by-second, as precisely as possible. This began an eight-year process of working like a somatic detective, choreographically and cinematographically. The resulting sequence of performances, and videos in shot and manipulated found-footage elevates the inchoate intelligence of the body, striving not to "solve the mystery” but to leave the artist and viewer more alert to living in the space of mystery and not-knowing. 

In so doing, Gurantz provides an alternative to the capitalist and misogynistic exploitation of E.L.’s story, and the reductive analysis of mental illness and spiritual experience to which people so readily default when they aren’t willing to face the limits of what they cannot understand.