There's a video work by the Belgian artist Sophie Whettnall that has remained part of my image repertoire since seeing it almost twenty years ago. Shadowboxing is a stripped down, understated work: a spare cement-block basement room with mirrors, a heavy punching bag hanging from the ceiling on chains, and a man in boxing gloves facing off against a woman standing stock-still in a sundress.
Sophie Whettnall, Shadowboxing (excerpt), video projection, 2004, 16mm film transferred to HD.
The boxer shuffles and dances around the woman, rocking his body back and forth, exhibiting a form of long shadowboxing, which involves using the fighter's long reach with jabs and straight shots to close the gap between the imaginary—or here very real—subject. He comes impossibly close to her while never actually striking her. Wisps of her hair move in reaction to the air being displaced so close to her flesh. She doesn't breathe, as if holding her breath to steady her body to keep from being hit. The fabric of her dress flutters on her body at moments; I imagine chilling her skin from the sweat that accumulates from surviving the moment. The sound of the boxer's quick breathing, and his fast scuffling footsteps squeaking against the concrete floor, is all of the audio needed for me, the viewer, to hold my breath in sympathy for the woman as if we are both keeping her safe by staying perfectly still. She in the room with the man, me witnessing her stillness through my own.
I imagine this work means something different to anyone that has experienced real violence versus it remaining a potential, but unrealized, threat. I count myself in the former population, but wiser for the knowing. What I know, and what I recognize in this work, is how stillness is survival in moments of chaos, violence, upheaval, uncertainty. Whettnall's piece shows the value of the thousand yard stare as opposed to direct eye contact with something that aggresses, that acts upon you. I feel that this stare is something that every woman learns how to do in the bid to keep herself safe in the world: do not engage, give them nothing to respond or react to, make yourself very very still. Make yourself a part of the landscape, part of the room, part of the air but not actually, physically there.
It's disassociation on full display. But it isn't a display of trauma. It's a display of willfulness against all of that. It's a display of strength.
The act of shadowboxing itself is a warm-up routine for boxing athletes, a training exercise to maintain a fighter's rhythm, and to show them how they would look at this stage in training against a potential opponent. Through the practice of shadowboxing, it gives the boxer notions of what is and is not fixed in their methodology, their habits, their form of anticipation, their rhythm. Mohammad Ali demonstrates a quick moment of shadowboxing using his famed "Ali shuffle" with Howard Cosell on ABC's Wide World of Sports in 1966.
Mohammad Ali demonstrating the Ali Shuffle to Howard Cosell on ABC's Wide World of Sports, 1966.
The dancing feet movement would distract an opponent from what Ali's hands and fists might be doing at the same time, creating an atmosphere of unpredictability that would work in Ali's favor.
The ability to stand still, avoid the blows, anticipate the other's distraction, and not flinch have all been qualities of my life in 2025 that I am reflecting upon on the last day of the year.
Gratitude lists are a thing that I consider with both an eye roll and a resignation with regard to its usefulness. Experienced practitioners of meditation will tell novices that the correct amount of daily meditation time is "Twenty minutes...unless you're too busy. Then you should sit for an hour." I view gratitude lists similarly. They are most effective when you are feeling the absolute least grateful for anything happening in your life.
At this precise moment, I'm viewing it as re-framing. Experiences I would have had a panic attack at knowing would occur this year have occurred, and yet I am still here. Not unscathed, exactly, but still myself. More myself, even.
A short gratitude list to close out this half century mark of my life.
- Clarity Over What Had Become Uncertain/Untenable Those moments in a marriage when I wondered if it would always be this way? Would this ever change? Would this ever get better? Is this what the rest of my life will look like? Feel like? I know the answer to that now. And the answer is a blessing and an exhale in its certainty and its finality.
- Remembering That I Am Really Good At What I Do When I bring my authentic self, when I show up and do what I say I'm going to do when I say I'm going to do it, when I allow my enthusiasm to become contagious, when I let them learn from one another more than insisting that they learn from me only, when I give them and myself a long leash, I can really teach my students something important about how to survive meaningfully in the world.
(l-r) John Baldessari as quoted by Hans Ulrich Obrist; that time when I invite my students to my home for a potluck at the end of the semester, and it's 70° outside in December.
- Writing and Making Are My Best Tools of Emotionally Self-Regulating I wrote for myself on this site every month of this year. I made art that I did not expect to make because I got caught up in the excitement of teaching the things I was teaching and had excited ideas for images that wanted to be made with the processes I was demonstrating. I taught myself better ways of doing things I had failed at before, and am now more than confidently able at doing. I made myself smile at these facts.
works in progress: chlorophyll prints cast in resin, anthotype with mangosteen.
- Friends Are Your Most Valuable Currency Friends that don't flinch at where you are. Friends that let you ugly cry in front of them. Friends that commisserate because they are also in a harsh-as-shit place on the wheel. Friends that will go out for a ridiculous meal with you just because. Friends that go with you on a lunch break to get a new piercing. Friends that take you out of your everyday and remind you that there is more to life than your everyday. Friends that show you a new view. Friends that remind you that age is a construct. Friends not pictured but felt and loved.
(l-r, top to bottom: brett and alex at sushi row; allison stewart with me in santa fe at la paloma; kate and i on her colorado couch before she moved back east; katja getting her ears repierced; kinley and i at post-semester cafe and chill; laura pressley and i in santa fe; tracie and i with her unparalleled view from her porch.
Thank you for not killing me, 2025, but making me stronger.
