Shown at Platform Arts 2023
Ilona Savchenko and Anna Schwann
installation, sculture, sound, photography, performance, video
A fledgling alternate reality.
Probing the utopic vision of fabricating a new landscape of possibilities to live within, proposing a new nature and a kit of parts to build it with. Sounds like a bio-hybrid IKEA. Arrange, rearrange, arrange. Reaching across physical dimensions, somaesthetics, light studies and political concerns of de/colonisation and environmental collapse, this work draws on the zeitgeist to consider the act of occupying space. The documented still life image suggests a way, it is a hesitant formation and open to change.
How should we move forward in this alien future? A relatable creature, the water strider fans its limbs to avoid sinking, holding the surface tension of the water to keep itself afloat. Sitting in the discomfort of the unknown, the water strider is our model for movement in this space.
This place will self-destruct like all good utopias do. A soft system collapse deliberately planned to allow space for the next uprising. Supported by queer theory of what it means to embrace failure, WE kiss the limits.