an animated piece based on "Escaping Into the Crossword Puzzle," an essay by Anna Shechtman about the parallels between her affinity for puzzle creation and her eating disorder. Both enable her to exercise control over her life, visualized by someone who traps herself into her own puzzles, and by extension, into a rigid way of thinking (reinforced by the measuring tape forming the grid). The infinite loop showcases this process as an endless cycle of her own creation, which she finds hard to break. View animation here
"’Crossword-puzzle constructor,’ I found, was an uncannily compatible identity-container. She must be disciplined, I imagined people thinking. A little obsessive, maybe—but the cultural residue of female hysteria, a century later, might have you convinced that this simply meant ‘adorable.’ And, without a doubt, she must be smart...
My war with my body at a temporary ceasefire, I escaped into an abstract matrix of letters and words. The simple fifteen-by-fifteen-square grid gave order to my racing thoughts and offered a replacement high for that of starvation. If, by the dumb logic of my eating disorder, I was losing something special about myself by gaining weight, I was bolstering my self-esteem by creating crosswords, something I knew to be difficult, precocious, and exceptional."