Dimensions Variable (DV) presents an interactive performance inviting the audience to a game of “spin the bottle” by Considered to be Allies (Margaux Parillaud and Mie Frederikke Fischer Christensen), a French/Danish artists duo based between Amsterdam and Chicago. The performance will take place on April 2, 2022, 7—9 pm in the Corridor Gallery.
The Yes and No of All Things
3d animated video, 16.35-minute loop.
A video showing a group of people playing a game of spin the bottle. The hand reaching for the bottle is exploring the boundaries between individual and collective. As the bottle spins it recalls to us the tension of sexuality and personal limitation in a social setting. What is at risk if the bottle points me out? What does it mean to be selected within the group? The spinning bottle is perhaps a relic of our own adolescence, where the empty wine bottle of the adult world is allowed into the seemingly innocent play of children. We wonder; has the spinning bottle and the young community around it taken on an increasing immaterial and virtual form? The bottle stops and becomes a symbol of time: a clock that has stopped ticking, the hands frozen in place, it’s only right twice a day. Ultimately the bottle asks us about the chance of faith: can we spin the bottle so it lands where we wish it to and how much are we able to plan our way out of?
Décalage
Video 6 min
Décalage documents the collective euphoria surrounding the Total Solar Eclipse of 2017. Passing in front of the sun, the moon covers it completely and for a moment leaves only a shimmering corona of light visible. Historically such an event, breaks with the natural cycle, was considered a bad omen, but in 2017 it became the one event to unite an increasingly divided North America under one sun. “Décalage” refers to a lack or a loss. A glitch in time, in experience or in communication. As with so many of nature’s spectacles we are unable to fully document or share our experience afterwards. A lack occurs, creating a feeling of alienation from the experience – rather than empathy. The entrance point to the experience does not happen through the grained image of a black dot on the sky but rather through the documentation of the “totaled” people experiencing it. Décalage, a lack, can also refer to the time gap or jet-lag, between the unifying euphoria of the Eclipse in 2017 and the covid-19 reality of today. In hindsight the Eclipse could easily be read as a foreshadowing of things to come and the pandemic as the collective hangover from the collective euphoria.
Considered to be Allies (Margaux Parillaud and Mie Frederikke Fischer Christensen)
Considered to be Allies (Margaux Parillaud and Mie Frederikke Fischer Christensen) are a French/Danish artists duo, working together since 2014. Their practice dynamically interchanges between their individual experience of the world and their mutual relationship. It’s a political practice that merges their dualities in one unified entity, deliberately working against the contemporary polarizing of society. Fascinated by mediation, their work asks questions about how our perception of reality and opinion-making is influenced by history, mythology, and pop culture as well as the “collective memory” of the subconscious. Oftentimes they use familiar clichés and tropes as an entrance point. These become the visible and tangible surface symptoms of the underlying problems they wish to address. Departing from the safe and comfortable, Considered to be Allies journey through circular structures of infinite loops and holes, slowly being pushed out of orbit until landing in an absurd and distorted reality. Here, they are positioned just far enough from the everyday to reflect on it from a distance. In order to stay grounded and not completely lose their heads in the clouds, they root their practice in a materiality and remain curious of the tactile and uncontrollable properties of materials. This is expressed through costumes, sets, props, and installation, all considered equal to their conceptual departure point. All the while, they explore the role of materials in creating new stories and of reshaping the assumed fabric of space and time as they wish to create new connections between the spiritual, the mysterious, and the material life of our daily lives.
