Baby Blue, 1998

The video is of a baby crying, captured on loop. It disturbs and unsettles as the viewer is placed in the helpless position of not being able to ease the baby’s crying. In an ever increasing sanitised world, Baby Blue explores the concept of emotional hygiene along a continuum of order versus chaos. The liquidity of raw emotion versus contained solid form polarises one against the other. According to D.W. Winnicot ‘there is no such thing as life without tears, except where there is compliance without spontaneity’. A new baby cries in direct respose to need. It contains the pain of that need not being met. The baby’s cry is a central means of communication and survival, letting us know when it is too hot, too cold, hungry, thirsty, wet, dirty, sick. The cry (like laughter) is something we must learn to control as we grow – in order to become ‘fully functioning’ human beings.

 


‘Baby Blue’ • video • 58:07

1-minute video of baby crying looped so that crying is continuous.

Design: iCulture