"Tonight we present five films from Abigail Child's on-going series, Is This What You Were Born For?, including her latest completed film, Mayhem. As with Goya's similarly titled group of etchings, 'This Is What You Were Born For,' Child's concerns are topical and political, but crucially, her title is in the interogative. Her questioning ranges from sexual politics to the politics of representation, and rather than providing answers, her densely worked image and sound tracks open up possibilities-of multiple and varied meanings, histories, actions (and reactions). Collaging found footage and her own images, existing and original sound, she undermines the authority of the past (as attributed to photographs and texts), and the 'inevitability' of the future (as mapped out by social convention). Through the use of juxtapositions-of image and sound (in and out of sync), shapes and gestures, past and present, public and private, documentary and narrative-her films engage in multi-layered analyses of movement, gender roles, and cinematic conventions. While Child's film titles-Prefaces, Mutiny, Covert Action, Perils and Mayhem-allude to detective serials, spy and adventure stories, and her concern with narrative structure, her films complexly examine everyday actions, perhaps suggesting that this is the terrain for strategies and struggles to keep open the question 'Is This What You Were Born For?'" Kathy Geritz