What happens if you mix the old children’s popcorn game, fairy tales and hallucinatory art with psychedelic images? It seems that Melanie Bernier (MEL) has the answer — this is how she rethinks her life experience and even expresses her concern about environmental pollution. In the article we tell how to put all facts together, and explain what psychedelic motifs have to do with it.
Game is over
The Popcorn Game / Melanie Bernier / www.melaniebernier.com
Rush with friends from school to finally play while parents are at work. Enjoy listening to the corn burst and pop. Gather everyone in a room and then send one player out the door. Choose the most unusual popcorn and call a friend back. Watch how many pieces of popcorn he eats until he gets one that was hidden. Repeat as many times as the pack lasts.
This popular popcorn game looks very attractive in childhood, but in the video work it will seem rather meaningless to the viewer. With such a graceful move, Melanie Bernier opens up the topic of the future for us. By her actions, she seems to be asking — how relevant will our life experience be to future generations when we grow old?
What will happen next?
The Popcorn Game / Melanie Bernier / www.melaniebernier.com
The artist brings the situation to the point of absurdity when we find ourselves in the memories of an elderly woman. Defiantly bright lipstick, animated popcorn with heads of smiling dogs – this is how her “youth” looks, which seems very attractive, but just as distant.
The visuals seem to scream: “Put popcorn on your tongue, close your eyes and swallow. Live in the moment and don’t worry about anything. Even the brightest impressions will then have no meaning.
Her energetic attempt to convey the wisdom of her time fails when the customs and conditions of her youth become incomprehensible to others.
What remains on the screen is a lonely, restless woman with many regrets. Perhaps such a “burning through” of life now seems senseless to her. Perhaps she wants to return to this past and forget herself again. Maybe both at the same time.
In any case, anxiety is felt through the screen. The artist goes on to ask the question:
“Will future generations view us as monsters for not doing more to avert disaster?”
What else does Melanie do?
Melanie Bernier is an artist who works at the intersection of music, performance and writing. In her art she uses secondary objects, embroidery, and materials from which she often chooses felt and soft fabrics.
Melanie combines humor, personal experience, politics and world problems. Such a spread of topics has reduced the number of communities in which she lives — punks, homosexuals, activists, actors, drug addicts, lifeguards, teachers and sports rats. There are also references to psychedelics in her work, and quite direct ones at that – for example, joints in a pack of cigarettes.
Melanie Bernier, Colors 50/50, 2013. Melanie Bernier / www.melaniebernier.com
Bernier’s work has been shown at the Museum of Arts and Design (NYC), Dirt Palace (Providence), Temple Contemporary, and Evening Hours, among many others. She was recently a finalist for the 2022 Frankenthaler Climate Art Award.
