PERFECTLY N AND NOT AN I

Paul Cronly & Maria Parsons (IE)

Video, 2014

PERFECTLY N AND NOT AN I is a video piece created as part of a broader collaboration between visual artist Paul Cronly and scholar Maria Parsons. It visually recycles and aurally remixes material sourced from an educational film to reveal the sometimes contradictory narrative present in sex education films. It exposes the underlying tension between biological facts and societal and cultural anxieties and taboos. In particular, PERFECTLY N AND NOT AN I examines how rational scientific explanation is mediated through educational films in order to sanitise and ‘contain’ the broader cultural aspects of menstruation. It marks an attempt to engage with menstrual blood, a subject matter that is, for the most part, absent in critical and philosophical thought, thus opening new ways to map and imagine the menses.

Paul Cronly is a visual artist who lives and works in Dublin, Ireland. He has participated in a number of international group shows. Maria Parsons is a scholar and writer. A graduate of Trinity College Dublin, she currently teaches in Dun Laoghaire Institute of Art, Design & Technology. Their work is a broad commentary on the contradictory attitudes, opinions, biases, and stereotypes associated with menstruation.