S/tr:w/EET WALK’s shoes were found on a street that presents a horse fair, near a Liffey que that used to be a prostitute's walk. They travel though Ireland, NYC, South Carolina, and Savannah Georgia with voices that carry strands of text about ideas latent in culture. Some belong to collective memory, some are historic facts, but all influence each other and are related in some way though not through a clear, simple concept.
The filmmaker’s personal story about a visit to Ireland; references to the Goddess, HECATE (Theogony of Hesiod); the Irish Cinderella tale entitled FAIR, BROWN & TREMBLING; excerpts from NY TIMES newspaper review (Ken Johnson) about US monumental art; songs & poems; Flannery O'Conner's WISE BLOOD; historic facts; and feminist takes on eroticism & pornography (Paula Gunn Allen & Audre Lord) connect intuitively, with associations reminiscent of a dream state:
SHOES = travel/journey = the way of transformation in Cinderella
shoes = erotic fetish/fashion allure
gender and economics underlies this
As money = power in our society, one way women can have money and power is through prostitution:
shoes = tools of the trade for prostitutes
In the old South whites OWN blacks = men OWN women
peaches (the cash crop after the Civil War) = women (pleasure to be consumed)
HISTORIC and mythic roots are revealed (Ireland, where many Southerners came from, is a root for many Americans); and in Irish myth and its Cinderella fairy tale, there is a world where women have the power and God is a woman.
PUBLIC ART: Statue of Liberty’s from = same as that of the goddess of the crossroads, Hecate (whether or not her male artist was aware of this). In 19th century public art = men asserting power /the patriarchy
