Bunny Rogers

Poetry reading in Columbine Cafeteria with Gazlene Membrane & Poetry reading in Columbine Library with Joan of Arc

In Rogers’ Columbine works, the artist explores the 1999 high school shooting that took place in Littleton, Colorado, claiming 34 victims. Rogers’ Columbine projects have focused on understanding the shooters through delving into online forums for other teenagers (many of them girls) who identify and sympathize with them. Her two-channel video work, Poetry reading in Columbine Cafeteria with Gazlene Membrane & Poetry reading in Columbine Library with Joan of Arc, focuses on two characters: Gazlene Membrane and Joan of Arc.

In the first, a digital interior shows a school cafeteria, reddish plastic chairs overturned and grouped around tables, the building’s emergency sprinklers raining pixelated drops onto the lake-like floor. A cube-headed female figure enters the scene—a digital rendition of the character, Gazlene Membrane, from the Invader Zim TV series—and stands atop one of the tables to recite tortured poetry from an illustrated notebook.

The second video begins with a darkened digital interior, with two cartoonish armchairs waiting against a green wall. Several minutes into the video, a red-haired avatar enters the scene, and takes a seat on one of the chairs. Reading in a monotone voice, the figure recites morbid lines—filled with angst, horror, and the humor that comes with remembering the feelings of teenaged alienation. Rogers explores the depths and limits of teenaged emotion in these works filled with angst, set against the backdrop of such real tragedy.