In the video California Seals, Frankie Martin examines the environmental impact of commercial development in Southern California as well as critically reversing the filmic tropes of female objectification. In the work, she places six male “seals” – men dressed only in grey pantyhose, with their hands covered in socks – in public fountains around La Jolla, CA. As such, the piece critically examines the controversy over the displacement of the animals from local beaches by placing her seals within the artificial landscapes of corporate locales, which in their development has served to threaten the natural habitat of the seals in the first place. Furthermore, her employment of human men in the guise of seals challenges the scopophilic tendencies of Busby Berkeley films, wherein the female form is objectified by the male gaze, through direct reversal of the pre-existing trope. (text by Emily Elizabeth Goodman)

Cast: Noah Dooely, Jesse Harding, Benjamin Lotan, Clinton McCallum, Jonathan Piper and Phillip Skaller

Sound design: Ross Karre, Frankie Martin (Mahler First Symphony, Third Movement)

Tuba: Jonathan Piper