The live performance and installation was staged at the South London Gallery as part of the closing event of We (not I) (a series of events across art spaces in London organised by artist Melissa Gordon and writer Marina Vishmidt, revolving around topics of “accumulation in collaborative art practice, the development of a “we” (non-singular) voice in art authorship, the gendered nature of art historic genius and female value.”)
In this performance the artists worked collaboratively to construct and present their interpersonal position, exposing the audience to a tangled web of networks that linked the artists and their practices (including neurological, technological, physical and emotional networks). Expanding upon their long-term friendship they generated a collective vernacular, siphoning moments of shared intimacy and cultural references through communication technologies.
The performance centred on a projected video work screened in the centre of the gallery, featuring a scripted dialogue between the 3 artists that occurs over a telephone conversation. The gender biasing of telephone networks was a motif explored throughout the performance. This video was accompanied by other video works displayed on flat screen monitors, sculptural props and a pre-recorded soundtrack of conversation and abstract sound integrated within a live DJ set. The simultaneous audio-visual elements were used to create a sense of displaced subjectivity for the audience, while the artists moved independently within the space conducting shared activities, such selecting music or reconfiguring the costume and props.
The secondary videos featured footage shot in a felled forest in Scotland and constructed sets in the artists’ studios. These mediated depictions of the artists spread across locations, accompanying their physical presence in the performance space, expressed the networked nature of their group identity and placed the artists in their own liminal place between fiction and reality. Whilst producing the videos the artists rotated roles of filming, performing and editing, in an attempt to undermine the traditional hierarchical structures associated with industrial filmmaking.