2 Figures

Installation. 2019 Two empty marionette controllers sat atop of two microphone stands. The piece is made out of: wood, metal fishing wire, plastic fishing wire, and aluminium foil. The wood is secured into shape by elastic bands, and there is a text printed on an A4 sheet that reads: //two static figures //imagine attacking each other //as smoke rises from their pipes This piece was inspired by the story in Italo Calvino’s ‘Invisible Cities’, in which merchant Marco Polo and Emperor Kublai Khan converse about Kublai’s empire, exploring themes of culture, time, memory, war, language, and the nature of human experience. The conversation is sometimes heated as the characters disagree on the values being discussed. In two figures, I take this idea and translate it to technological controllers versus natural controllers, void of an article to dominate and thus becoming humanized themselves. The text shares that a muted conflict is happening or about to happen, this is furthered by the microphone stands, signifying an awaited performance. The double dashes ‘//’ is code language that tells programming software to overlook instructional lines when performing an action. The text exists therefore as a technological whisper. The work welcomes the audience to produce their own interpretations, moving between the virtual and physical registers of meaning and making that inhabit it.