we are the landscape
2014
We are the landscape features eight women who have lived and worked together. The work explores the precariousness of many young women’s live/work situations and aims to critique London’s neo-liberal environment, and the gentrification of the city. We are the landscape has a dystopian science-fiction feel. The work features the group of women acting out monotonous poses in the form of a tableaux vivant. They wear QWERTY keyboard costumes, smoke e cigarettes and wrap themselves in hydrothermal blankets whilst speaking multiple languages. I believe we are entrenched in a deeply surreal and dystopic reality, but have grown so accustomed to it that we no longer even notice. My intention, in part, was to defamiliarize the environment, in order to make evident what is already present. Shot upside down the work disorientates the viewer, further amplified by the sound of the women’s meditative group humming. “The hum” is a phenomenon involving widespread reports of a persistent and invasive low frequency humming, rumbling, or a droning noise not audible to all people. I am interested in depicting and portraying everyday science fictions, because, as J.G. Ballard writes: “Everything is becoming science fiction. From the margins of an almost invisible literature has sprung the intact reality of the 20th century”.
Thanks to Sara, Rosie, Ruth, Onny, Chooc-Ly, Rachel, Moe and Matilda
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