- ARTIST STATEMENT -
The precariousness of life can be enlarged when people drift, trespass or stumble into marginal spaces, at the edges of society and deep into the unconscious. Here, through choice or chance, life's direction can take a sudden twist and lead us down a path unforeseen, from one reality to another. At these liminal sites lies the potentiality for lines of flight to decohere, for life to free itself from the stasis of the mundane, unleashed into the world of the extraordinary. Through a collection of speculative narratives, this work explores what possibilities lie beneath the surface and at the fringes of everyday life, particularly the ways in which we connect with each other as individuals, as friends, family, lovers, work colleagues, neighbours, and as strangers. In this way, ‘Duplicity’ provides commentary on relationships, the human condition and the delicacy of life's trajectory.
This work, then, is an investigation across the plane of immanence, where the ordinary and the banal become strange; where the ‘homely’ becomes ‘unheimlich’. And vice-versa. Where the ‘real’ haunts the ‘unreal’. Or more precisely, where all possible realities become as real as each other. The suburban street becomes an anxiety zone; the local park a site of disquiet; the theatre of war decoheres into domestic bliss; and a leap across a marital threshold turns to a 15-storey death plunge. .
By applying the destabilizing concepts of quantum physics to our everyday lives and drawing upon Gilles Deleuze’s post-structuralist exploration of cinema through his concept of the crystal image, new narrative possibilities emerge – entangled narratives that challenge our understanding and experience of ‘truth’ and ‘reality’ in our day-to-day existence.
‘Duplicity’ invites the audience to question their own understanding of what is being presented in this work - to imagine, explore and extend these narratives and to challenge the veracity of their own entangled lives; in a sense to make this work a part of their own lives; to experience it, to perform it, to immerse themselves within it – to ‘intra-act’ it.