If It Bleeds

Pauwels describes If It Bleeds as a “workplace pageant” whose colorful characters and garish camera-friendly sets provide a backdrop to trace the intricacies of workplace hierarchy. Her subjects revolve around intra-group dynamics and the transactional structure of work. Ranging from the world of an online dominatrix and her customers (in the case of her recent installation ,000,) to the systems of behavior and psychological dynamics involved in the televised spectacle of the Ultimate Fighting Championship (the point of departure for If It Bleeds), Pauwels’ blend of performance and documentary realism explores the fraught relationship between narrative conventions and everyday social interaction. 

Pauwels approaches the process of making each new artwork from the position of editor, both in the sense of a video editor who cuts recorded footage on a timeline and the sculptor that chips away at physical material until it takes shape. Pursuing a deep engagement with the linguistic structures around any given group or community, Pauwels starts by listening: amassing notes, found footage, fragments of speech, and snippets of conversation. From these textual and visual materials, the script is assembled and adapted through the process of directing the cast. In post-production she strips the performances to their constituent parts through fast paced cuts until a play of gesture emerges that distills the vernacular dynamics of each character.

—Vic Brooks, Curator, Time-Based Visual Art