The piece is absurd, over the top, ridiculous. Like love songs. Like love. Near the end of the song, one figure offers to the viewer a previously out- of-frame ice cream cone, a sweet, comic, impossible to receive gesture. After her doppelgangers blink off the screen, the central figure continues to stare at the camera, eyes dazed, almost catatonic. It takes a lot out of a person to be so vulnerable in front of strangers. Her companions have left her. After a few minutes, she leaves us. The most poignant nexus of “failure” is the piece’s context. Love Hurts was made to be shown at Biola. Uretsky, an alum, no longer calls herself Christian. The explicit mission of Biola has thus failed to take root in her. Yet its legacy and tradition has not failed to inform Uretsky’s work, as she herself remarks: Believe it or not, much of my work starts with a bible verse or two. Matthew 18:20 stirred up Love Hurts. I have always struggled with the concept of God’s presence and so clung to this idea that where two or three gather in his name—he is there. What an interesting look at the power of community, intimacy and interpersonal relationships. Does this verse imply that we could conjure up the ol’ Holy Spirit just by hanging out with each other? What happens when one (me) leaves a community but still longs for God’s presence? Make three puppets and conjure that spirit by way of video! And what do I have to say to the spirit when he arrives? Your love hurt me. What J.R. Uretsky makes is marked by that hurt—by the ways we fail each other and ourselves. It also invites us to presence, and to possibility.
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