What Rough Beast, Its Hour Come Round at Last?
Denmark
2019
Patricia Petersen explores the story of Christiana Edmunds who was an English murderer, popularly known as the “Chocolate Cream Killer”, who carried out a series of poisonings in Brighton during the early 1870s. Petersen works to question the narrative where she allegedly went on a poisoning spree when her lover, the married Dr. Beard, refused her love, lacing cream chocolates with poison. The documented rumors, from the time piece together the story that the two had exchanged several love letters during their affair.
The sound piece of the film is a reading of a love letter the artist found by the Thames River, half of which was burned, forever taking its contents with it. As in the case of Christina Edmunds and Dr. Beard, the true extent of their feelings will never be known, nor the true nature of the events that follow. What remains is speculation; an uncertain jumble of the physical and emotional, body parts and traumas.
Portfolio
About the artist
Patricia Petersen is an multidisciplinary artist born in 1993 in Copenhagen. She lives in London. She is currently studying a degree in Fine Art: Print & Time Based media at Wimbledon College of Arts, University of Arts London. Her work draws from diverse cultural experiences. This diversity has offered Petersen inspiration from a variety of aesthetic landscapes. Her practice includes photography, video, sculpture, installation and sound. It explores the correlation between memory, perception, nature, emotion and the body through a lens that looks at the absurdity of modern living in Europe.