Kristen Mills
Seats for Everyone

Kristen Mills

I use video and images to engage with timing and humor. I use myself as a surrogate for others, freeing me to poke fun at pop-cultural assumptions and behaviors. I multiply and position myself as willful yet unexceptional in these various versions of “me.” I work things out this way, where I create interactions with myself, and I can rearrange my world how I want. I create situations where I belong or work to prove that I belong—using personalities, acts, and labor to distinguish these self-characters.

Staging and sound are critical as they act as props or characters that assist in the telling. I often create cardboard structures for my sets; pairing digital work with analog material has allowed me to look at things differently. I blend the real with the staged to heighten visual and cerebral absurdities. I am fascinated by the difference between what is real and what is fake, or what makes something believable. While I never set out specifically to create work that is often viewed as “campy,” my humor and playful approach align with the camp sensibility that embraces deliberate exaggeration and the intentional blurring of boundaries between high and low culture.