Wren Gardiner

welcome to my page !!

hello, my name is Wren, like the bird. i use they/them pronouns. i am a 2nd year MFA student, and i work in performance, video, writing, and installation. here are some fun bts videos from the past few months.

right now, i’m specifically interested in diet culture and the commodification of health. sometimes i feel like people don’t acknowledge diet culture or even know it exists, or they don’t see certain things as a part of that structure. it is deeply intertwined with commodification and the healthcare industry in the US and is a product of racist, colonialist, and Christian histories. i’m angry about how it affects me and my relationship to my body, but i’m also angry about how it affects everyone and how it feels like a niche topic when it’s actually everywhere. 

i'm currently trying to channel this into my work via some sort of game/performance. (a question i am pondering is, is the work a game or a performance? or both? and what's the difference?) currently, i am in the process of working out these questions and a lot of other ones. below is a first play test i did of the game/performance this earlier this month (February 2022).

in May 2021, i finished a project called *sensitive content* (death, life, self-reflection, white women, fascism, eating disorders, 24-to-28-year-olds, earthquakes, etc.). in this project, i perform a singular monologue as various characters. this is a short video of the installation.