Mieke Marple

2022, video, 42 sec
VFX by Francisco García Nava

"Cold and silent, like a heart" is a feminist reinterpretation of Antonín Dvořák's symphonic poem: "The Water Goblin" (1896), based on a poem of the same name by Czech folklorist Karel Jaromír Erben from 1853. The poem is about a goblin who abducts a young maiden and forces her to bare his child. It ends with the girl reconnecting with her mother and refusing to return to her unhappy life with the goblin, which the goblin then punishes by murdering their child. In Marple's reimagining, told through animated images and select stanzas from Erben's poem (see below), the goblin is removed from the narrative. The focus becomes the girl's mental state and what now reads as her decision to end the life of her own child—a la a kind of abortion. The story is still a heavy one, but it at least depicts the young girl with her unwanted pregnancy as a person of agency rather than an agent-less victim. This piece continues Marple's interest in revisiting myths—particularly those in which sexual-abused women are demonized or depicted as impotent—and retelling them with greater empathy and empowerment for the female characters.