Made for Denise
1978, 5 minutes
Made for Denise, along with Polaroid Cocaine and
Brooding Angles (made for R.L.), is the closest thing Auder has produced
to music videos.
Made For Denise features the music of Philip Glass
whose acquaintance Auder made in the early 1970s while producing work
for The Kitchen. Through the use of original and appropriated video
footage, Auder translates a religious sermon into an expression of love
for this strikingly beautiful woman. This lovers tale opens with a photograph
of Denise that is alternately caressed and crushed in the palm of her
lover's hand; a gesture oscillating between affection and an obsessive
and irrational desire for possession.
Auder builds on the increasing grandeur of the sermon's
metaphors, extending them into the realm of destruction. The mood undergoes
a violent shift as what was once fruit and flowers abruptly gives way
to catastrophe.