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Poem of E.L. (Immersive)

In 2013, a woman’s last known movements were captured by elevator surveillance. Released by the LAPD to identify her body, this footage quickly exploded online into thousands of conspiracy theories, becoming fodder for horror and true crime exploitation.

"Poem of E.L." explores Elisa Lam’s unsolved death by dismantling the tired tropes used to tell her story, translating the elevator footage into a series of 6 videos and 2 dance pieces.

The attached video is a single-channel version of two of the videos: "Surveillance Cinema" and "Last Walk / Fugue"

  • Maya Gurantz
    Director
  • Maya Gurantz
    Writer
  • Maya Gurantz
    Producer
  • Maya Gurantz
    Key Cast
  • Maya Gurantz
    Lead Artists
  • Scott Ressler
    Key Collaborators
  • Adam Parrish King
    Key Collaborators
  • Project Type:
    Performance, Installation
  • Minimum Runtime:
    10 minutes
  • Maximum Runtime:
    60 minutes
  • Average Runtime:
    30 minutes
  • Variable Runtime Details:
    2 dance works and 6 videos.
    They can be shown at once in a multi-channel installation environment, or can be shown as a single channel. Physical performance is part of this installation.
  • Completion Date:
    September 5, 2022
  • Production Budget:
    20,000 USD
  • Country of Origin:
    United States
  • Language:
    English
  • Student Project:
    No
  • Prospect Art PRESENT WORK
    Los Angeles
    United States
    April 7, 2023
    Award / Installation
Director Biography - Maya Gurantz

I'm an artist in video, performance, installation and writing.

My work has been shown at museums, galleries worldwide, including: (solo) 2220Arts, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver, the Grand Central Art Center, Catharine Clark Gallery, Greenleaf Gallery, Pieter PASD, the Oakland Museum of California, among others, and (group): the Museum of Contemporary Art Utah, Angels Gate Cultural Center, Beaconsfield Gallery Vauxhall, Navel LA, Art Center College of Design, The Goat Farm Atlanta, The Great Wall of Oakland, High Desert Test Sites, Autonomie Gallery, and Movement Research at Judson Church.

Recent film festival showings include: Athens International Film and Video Festival, the San Francisco Dance Film Festival, New Haven International Film Festival, Austin Arthouse Film Festival, Austin Dance on Film, and the New Jersey Film Festival (among others).

I recently was awarded Prospect Art's PRESENT WORK commission and an NEA Distinguished Fellowship at the Hambidge Art Center. I just returned from an Artist Residency at UNC Playmakers where I restaged and created new dance scores. I was the recipient of the inaugural Pieter Performance Grant for Dancemakers, and in 2020 was an Artist in Residence at the McColl Center for Art and Innovation in Charlotte, NC.

I’m a regular contributor to The LA Review of Books, where my essay, Kompromat, was the most read article of 2019. I have written and recorded stories for shows This American Life and The Frame at KPCC, The Awl, Notes on Looking, Avidly, Acid-Free, Baumtest Quarterly, RECAPS Magazine.

Add Director Biography
Director Statement

Mysteries and horror stories and even true crime procedurals ultimately exist in our culture to reinforce dominant narratives: patriarchal order, threatened by chaos in its most monstrous forms, gets restored in the end.

When I started working with Elisa Lam's story, it was in response to the wild viral response, how these kinds of conspiracy theories and stale Hollywood approaches attempted to "explain" her private behavior in an elevator and inexplicable death. How she was interpreted once she could no longer speak for herself.

I began by memorizing her movement, second-by-second. Working like a somatic detective, I began developing a sequence of performances and video installations that put her physical intelligence at the center of any possible attempt to unwind the mystery.

This project strives not to “solve” Elisa's death, but to learn from her—to leave the viewer and myself more present in what cannot ever be known. I seek to undermine the capitalist exploitation of her story, the casual misogyny of how she’s read, the reductive analysis of mental illness and spiritual experience to which people default so easily and readily when they aren’t willing to face the limits of what they cannot understand.