“The phra­se ​‘bureau­cra­tic nightma­re’ brings together, wit­hout any appa­rent con­tra­dic­ti­on, the flu­o­res­cent, illu­mi­na­ted world of papers and weights and the unre­al, form­less world of dreams.

This slip­pery pla­ce bet­ween the mun­da­ne and the maca­b­re, bet­ween real mono­to­ny and ima­gi­na­ry fears, has been cal­l­ed Kafkaesque, sur­re­al, or Lynchian. Trapped within sys­tems of incre­a­sing com­plexi­ty with dimi­nis­hing returns, the­re is a com­mon ten­si­on and anguish: things don’t make sense.

Our pro­ject aims to explo­re this con­tra­dic­to­ry spa­ce of the ultra-mun­da­ne. Working throug­hout the buil­ding of the artist’s resi­d­en­cy CAS-CO, we will approp­ri­a­te the codes and objects of the offi­ce, the kit­chen, the bar, devel­o­ping an instal­la­ti­on and loun­ge-caba­ret per­for­man­ce to be pre­mie­red in spring 2025.

The incident(al)

The com­po­ser Robert Ashley, explai­ning the role of sin­gers in his ope­ras, sta­ted: ​‘I don’t think the­re is any heroism any­mo­re.’ Instead, his works often focu­sed on inci­den­tal speech, ner­vous tics, stut­ters, and mumblings.

Drawing from per­for­man­ce tech­ni­ques devel­o­ped by Robert Ashley, Laurie Anderson, Gary Farrelly, and Sue Tompkins, our wor­king metho­do­lo­gy will explo­re inci­den­tal stra­te­gies. By lis­te­ning to the ultra-mun­da­ne, we want to explo­re how the dif­fi­cul­ties of lan­gu­a­ge, bureau­cra­cy, embar­rass­ment, and fai­lu­re can be inte­gra­ted into our col­lec­ti­ve artis­tic practice.

These stra­te­gies are alrea­dy pre­sent in our work. Francesca Hawker’s instal­la­ti­on Coffee Machine which sounds a lot like rain (2022), for example, pre­sents a series of cof­fee mugs con­tai­ning a prin­ted e‑mail exchan­ge con­cerning a per­for­man­ce which was can­cel­led due to rain. It is a con­cep­tu­al resu­mé of a per­for­man­ce that could have been. The instal­la­ti­on inclu­des a drip-fil­ter cof­fee machi­ne, the inci­den­tal sounds of which are ampli­fied, evo­king an onco­ming storm.

Similarly, Lucian Moriyama’s sculp­tu­re Lighthouse trans­forms navi­ga­ting bureau­cra­cy and fai­lu­re into an artis­tic gestu­re of hope and libe­ra­ti­on. In the spi­rit of pira­te radio, he cir­cum­vents regu­la­ti­ons on radio waves and invents pro­to­cols to trans­mit his songs over visi­ble light. By sen­ding sound through light, sha­dows beco­me silen­ce, and lenses beco­me amplifiers. 

Anastasia Hadjipapa-McCammon’s per­for­man­ces revol­ve around the figu­re of the detec­ti­ve, trans­for­ming eve­ry­day objects into clues. The detec­ti­ve offers a mask or dis­gui­se through which to encoun­ter the world; Her per­for­man­ce Holes of Deep Importance, used a radio show nar­ra­ti­ve to del­ve into the­mes of para­noia, bureau­cra­cy, and the mun­da­ne by con­nec­ting objects with a detective’s red thread.

When taken together, the­se gestu­res demon­stra­te a sha­red resol­ve to tran­sub­stan­ti­a­te fai­lu­re into fan­ta­sy, the over­loo­ked into the fundamental.”