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Transformation to Evil
"The liberating thing about being dead is you're not bound by social constraints, monetary value and well being. Somewhere in my challenge to keep the dead walking I forgot these few beautiful and freeing rules of being dead and got caught up in survival...human survival."Thea Munster (Faulds)Here is Thea, a smart and intelligent woman. I went to school with her at Ryerson University, in Toronto. I liked her. She was quiet, pensive, and she usually said intelligent things (of the few things she said).----------------------------------------------------------------------------
But something strange happened when she was doing her final year thesis, where we are left on our own to produce a graduation-worthy project.
I worked consistently, never leaving the campus, using the various production suites of film, video, photography and printing. My final year, I produced five projects:- a short film (manual editing with film strips)My film eventually was viewed in various venues, including in Paris and Prague.
- a photography presentation (with real dark-room processing)
- a video piece, which ended up being a large, looped installation
- a silk screen piece, with messy chemical processing
- and a website, which incorporated all my projects both for viewing, and for reviewing in a new manner
My photographs were displayed in two venues, the university's image gallery and at the Allan Gardens Conservatory in Toronto.
My video was screened at Trinity Square Video in Toronto.
What did Thea do, this intelligent, apparently artistic, student? She made an excuse! She said that she doesn't like people looking at her work, and could she show her pieces privately to the professors!!!
That was when I began to realize her strangeness.
Later on, she would spend three years working on a short film. Even for procrastinating artists that is a long time. She does have some films that she's submitted to various programs, but she hasn't listed her work in any coherent manner, so I would assume she doesn't have much regard for them.
She did make a documentary film with a group about HIV, which won an award at The City of Hamilton Arts Awards (a city about half an hour south of Toronto). The film criticizes the attempts to make HIV people accountable for their sexual behaviour by saying that it "criminalizes" them. I suppose the blood in HIV discourse fits Faulds' vampire/ghoul/zombie lifestyle.
Her "artistic" energy eventually went into various arts management positions, including as the founder of the Toronto Zombie Walk.----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Thea used to look like this when I went to school with her, with a face completely covered in white makeup cream, bright red lipstick outlined in a pout, shaved eyebrows with drawn-in lines, heavy black mascara on her lashes, and what I think was bleached blonde hair, although that could have been her natural color (most goths/vampires/zombies dye their hair pitch black).
The photo above is from around 2010.
Below is a photo of her around 2001, which is closer to what she looked like when I knew her.
Her final project never materialized. I think she got her degree, and kept her job at the campus video center for several years after that where I used to run into her (I was at one time editing video pieces for a presentation at Trinity Square).
A while later, I saw her downtown somewhere, still in her ghoulish make-up and black dress, and I couldn't bring myself to greet her.
Below are photos of Thea which she has posted on her Facebook page. It shows a narcissistic side of her, which I should have recognized earlier. The photos show her morphing into into evil.
The devolution into evil:
A "cemetery field trip" as is the title of this photo in her Facebook:
When you look closer at these photos, you begin to notice strange things.
Like tattoo all over her arms in the top photo, which is clearly visible here.
And the glint in her eyes in the second photo becomes this, when fully exposed.
And the sophistication that she seems to convey in some of her photos is covered with sores and scabs.
And she transforms into a flesh-eating creature
a "zombie"
who slithers out of the netherworld
to join us mortals
in a carnivalesque celebration of "the dead."
And the dead have only one standard to emulate: that of the living, where, for example, weddings are performed and zombies get married. Faulds talks, without the slightest irony, of "my husband."
Here she is with her husband, in their wedding gear.----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The transformation is complete.----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted By: Kidist P. Asrat
