exit strategies — kym mcdaniel

(2017-2021, 40:23min)

Exit Strategies are a six-video film series created after a head injury and resulting chronic illnesses changed my relationship to time, my body, and dance. In the series, I translated my choreographic process to screen in order to keep my practice, and myself, alive.

The films are rooted in an experimental and feminist film tradition, using a DIY production ethos, montage editing techniques, voiceover, text-on-screen, and performance to articulate an identity in reformation after trauma. As I worked improvisationally with bodies, objects, and nature, I created disabled movement lexicons and began to articulate my embodiment after injury. In the aftermath of trauma, video became a vehicle to rebuild my relationship to my body and world.

The films were created between 2017 and 2021. They have screened modularly and as a set. Image, edit, sound, performance and writing by Kym McDaniel. Available with and without closed captions. For purchase and licensing please email.

“McDaniel collects the detritus in life and lets it spill over onto the screen, flaws and all, with a raw exuberance and skin-on-skin tactility.” (Grant Phipps, Tone Madison)

“Filmmaker Kym McDaniel uses a variety of artistic media to paint a strikingly honest and personal portrait of the search for identity while confronting emotional and physical traumas.” (Wisconsin Film Festival)

Exit Strategy #1 (2017/2018, 7:21 min) Objects manifest to tell the stories I do not know how to put into words. I realize life with chronic pain will require a radical reconstruction of my world. Segments inspired by Christine Miserandino's Spoon Theory of chronic illness.

Exit Strategy #2 (2017, 4:55min) I seek treatment for a head injury and a memory is triggered from years earlier. In resistance to my past ways of coping, I release this stored body memory. tw: medical trauma, memory recall

Exit Strategy #3 (2018, 7:18min) A collage of images and thoughts after a summer where my chronic fatigue syndrome and chronic pain left me sleeping for days at a time.

Exit Strategy #4 (2018, 8:14min) This film includes stories about a girl who made herself puke as a method of survival. She performs healing rituals in the present day in attempt to honor her traumatic past. tw: memory recall, eating disorder, suicidal ideation

Exit Strategy #5 (2020, 8:29min) An origin story and the rebirth of an identity after trauma. An exploration in my intertwined worlds of intimacy, chronic pain, and queerness. tw: language, memory recall

coda (2021, 3:03min) Like a coda in a dance composition, this video is a finale to the variation. tw: flashing lights/strobe

Screenings:

Chronicles of the Chronic, installed at Rochester Art Center, Curated by Zoe Cinel, Rochester, MN

Entrance & Exit Strategies, Red Eye Theatre – Minneapolis, MN

Love + Other Violence: Kym McDaniel & Cecelia Condit, Rhizome Microcinema - Washington, DC

Love + Other Violence: Kym McDaniel & Cecelia Condit, Mills Foley Microcinema - Madison, WI

Exit Strategies, Society for Disability Studies Conference, Ohio State University - Columbus, OH