Cassie McQuater and Kelly Moran present “Love Birds, Night Birds, Devil-Birds”

Love Birds, Night Birds, Devil-Birds is a re-imagining of the surrealist story “The Debutante,” by artist Leonora Carrington, in which a young woman exchanges places with a hyena, masked in a suit of human skin, for her societal debut. Extravagant dresses made of anatomical parts, glass, and pink light swirl in pastoral landscapes populated by undulating fluorescent flowers, strange monsters and deconstructed birds, who paint the sky. Part of an on-going series exploring the mythological idea of women’s bodies as dangerous and poisonous gardens, with references to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s story “Rappaccini’s Garden” – the origin story of Batman’s Poison Ivy.

Original music by Kelly Moran.

Cassie McQuater (B. 1987, USA) is a new media and video game artist living and working in Los Angeles. Her practice involves hours of surfing the net, mining for digital artifacts, and repurposing them as a way to reflect on and reinvent our relationship with interactive storytelling.

Kelly Moran is a composer and producer from New York. She is known for her work as a piano experimentalist, composing music using extended timbral techniques, “prepared” piano, and technologically-modified pianos including the Yamaha Disklavier and Trans-Acoustic pianos. Her most recent album Ultraviolet was released by Warp Records in 2018.