exit strategies — kym mcdaniel

Many individual journal pages/entries, taped to a yellow wallpapered wall. They flutter in the breeze, as if they are alive..

(2017-2021, 40:23min)

After developing chronic pain from a head injury, Exit Strategies were created as a healing experiment. In six video chapters, I use voice, text, gesture, and the camera to fragment the past and reclaim my body and her memories. Working improvisationally with bodies, objects, and nature, I create disabled movement lexicons and articulate my embodiment after injury. In the aftermath of trauma, video is a vehicle to rebuild my relationship to my body and world.

“McDaniel collects the detritus in life and lets it spill over onto the screen, flaws and all, with a raw exuberance and skin-on-skin tactility.” (Grant Phipps, Tone Madison)

“Filmmaker Kym McDaniel uses a variety of artistic media to paint a strikingly honest and personal portrait of the search for identity while confronting emotional and physical traumas.” (Wisconsin Film Festival)

Exit Strategy #1 (2017/2018, 7:21 min) Objects manifest to tell the stories I do not know how to put into words. I realize life with chronic pain will require a radical reconstruction of my world. Segments inspired by Christine Miserandino's Spoon Theory of chronic illness.

Exit Strategy #2 (2017, 4:55min) I seek treatment for a head injury and a memory is triggered from years earlier. In resistance to my past ways of coping, I release this stored body memory. tw: medical trauma, memory recall

Exit Strategy #3 (2018, 7:18min) A collage of images and thoughts after a summer where my chronic fatigue syndrome and chronic pain left me sleeping for days at a time.

Exit Strategy #4 (2018, 8:14min) This film includes stories about a girl who made herself puke as a method of survival. She performs healing rituals in the present day in attempt to honor her traumatic past. tw: memory recall, eating disorder, suicidal ideation

Exit Strategy #5 (2020, 8:29min) An origin story and the rebirth of an identity after trauma. An exploration in my intertwined worlds of intimacy, chronic pain, and queerness. tw: language, memory recall

coda (2021, 3:03min) Like a coda in a dance composition, this video is a finale to the variation. tw: flashing lights/strobe

Screenings:

Chronicles of the Chronic, installed at Rochester Art Center, Curated by Zoe Cinel, Rochester, MN

Entrance & Exit Strategies, Red Eye Theatre – Minneapolis, MN

Love + Other Violence: Kym McDaniel & Cecelia Condit, Rhizome Microcinema - Washington, DC

Love + Other Violence: Kym McDaniel & Cecelia Condit, Mills Foley Microcinema - Madison, WI

Exit Strategies, Society for Disability Studies Conference, Ohio State University - Columbus, OH