Foam Sweet Foam
Foam Sweet Foam is a series of videos by Third Skin Collective, described as “a spell of prozac 💊 & glitter ✨.” These films look like Miwa Yanagi’s photography come to life. They also share something in common with Francesca Warner’s work, though the images here are clearer and brighter, visually distinct despite the vague things that happen. Watching Foam Sweet Foam gives you a blurry feeling, even when everything shown appears tangible and solid.
Three young women move in rooms. They are almost always inside. They are interior girls in mostly interior worlds.
All three wear cute collared dresses with white socks and shiny patent Mary Janes. Aside from the colour, their dresses are identical. Their outfits are smooth and pristine, with some creases but no stains. Similarly, the interiors they move through are clean and cosy, lived-in but not used up.
Their movements are elegantly awkward. Deliberately mechanical. A little like that Betsy Ross Dance film, but more polished. Maybe they are related to Olympia, the robot girl invented by E. T. A. Hoffmann. Their limbs move like pretty insects; their shiny Mary Janes resemble chitin.
Sometimes they dance. Sometimes they crawl. Sometimes they hold seances or hug ghosts. Sometimes they lie on floors or try to slip through cracks in doors. Sometimes they look happy, and other times they look tired. Sometimes they look you in the eye.
It’s always interesting when these videos branch from the pattern.
In one video, two of the women, faces offscreen, try to hug. They reach out their arms, but can’t touch. They’re so close, but can’t connect. This is different from the other videos, where the women have no problem touching. They pose and move huddled up together, with barely anything separating them.
The way they touch is both intimate and detached. They can stand and sit right beside (or even on top of) one another with no problem, in a way most people would find too close for comfort. Normally, only someone very used to another’s presence would be able to touch like that.
But the way they do it is so poised and practised. They do it like they are insides a machine, touching in sync. It doesn’t seem like this machine does anything, but that’s what makes it fun. According to the hashtags, they are bored housewives. Maybe they make up curious games and dances to pass the time.
Who are they married to? Maybe no one. Maybe they are all married to the same person. Maybe they are married to one another. Maybe they’re related and dropping in, like in The Makioka Sisters.
In some videos, they don’t wear their usual dresses. In some, they seem to be naked, their bodies hidden by white curtains. Even in those videos, they still wear their white socks and shiny Mary Janes. There’s a sense of relief to those dressless videos, though they are still only able to express themselves in the same jerkily refined motions.
There’s a similar sense of a relief when they are allowed a complete wardrobe change. Here, they wear lacy white dresses. Loose and ephemeral, these outfits look more comfortable, easier to wear and move in. The girls let their hair down too. Their movement is still poised, but less rigid as they stand in a sunbeam, enjoying the soft freedom of their new dresses.
In another video, one woman sits in the both while another does her hair. She uses clothespins, not hairpins. The woman in the bath is very still, with her back to us. She has no dress on, but still wears those socks and Mary Janes. Her legs lean up against the wall, as if to keep her socks and shoes dry. The other one carefully and gently puts pins in her hair. There’s something more vulnerable about this video, like we’re watching them get ready between takes.
There are barely any videos where they don’t wear those pure white socks or shiny Mary Janes.
The three women don’t seem fully free or fully confined. The women can come and go between rooms (in the same building?) and between places, but always end up back in the same place. They can go outside, but always come back in. The rooms become their world, and it’s a world they’ve turned strange. Even outside, their world is inside. They take the inside with them, wherever they go. They turn the outside into another room.
It looks like they dance because they’re unhappy, but want to be happy. Like they’re bored or frustrated and want to bounce off walls, but can only express those feelings in specific, restrained ways.
We’re just viewers. We don’t belong to these rooms. We’re not at home in these rooms. Not like they are.
Foam dissolves. Does a home dissolve?