Dreaming in Blue
2023 Video
35 minutes
Fake fur, couch, thread
The sensation of melting into a couch is both comforting and horrific at the same time. It is something one desires when lounging on the couch on a Sunday afternoon. To disappear completely. To slide into the comfortable slit of the couch and sink into it. The creatures who inhabit this couch form a merging of beast and fauteuil in which one can no longer distinguish between either. The slowness of movement here emphasizes a state of being that is tired and sluggish. Every movement feels heavy and overwhelming at this slow pace in which it is hard to see anything moving at all. The icy blue color of the fur and light further assigns a type of sadness and blues to this moment in time. One could get the feeling that these creatures have been here for ages and have grown into the couch, become one with it over time.
This work is an interpretation of the 19th century tradition of the tableau vivant, a form of live theatre that can be seen as a breathing still life. No movement can be discerned except for the breath of the performers and the trickles of sweat dripping from their brows. Even if you know there are performers right in front of you, you are deceived by the stillness of their performance. This creates a magical moment, a shift of perception in which an uncanny realm is accessed that unsettles the borders between performer and sculpture. This stillness resists the tendency of our everyday reality to speed up, to always be faster and more efficient. It rather opposes this speed by being as slow as possible. Finding comfort in this extreme slowness becomes something in and of itself horrific as this rhythm that has grown into something unnatural.
Supported by Pictoright Steunfonds Startende Makers 2022.
