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An Experiment in Intervals III – Violet Desert
Presented by Centre for Projection Art
“An Experiment in Intervals III – Violet Desert” is a video work made in response to a decommissioned industrial plant in Barreiro, Portugal operated by the Companhia União Fabril from the early 20th Century. Ushering in what was intended to be the economic boom of industrialisation, it is now a toxic, barren site, standing as a reminder of both the promises and failures of this vision. The work characterises the quality of this site as one of “monstrous architectures” — a term used by Georges Bataille to refer not only to what is against the sacred but that quality which materialises in the machinations of state violence and industrial exploitation. The smokestack, the factory, the industrial zone — these denote spatial territories that are seen to materialise a disorder under God. The title — Violet Desert — references Michelangelo Antonioni’s 1968 film “Il Deserto Rosso”, an early critique of the impact of modernity on the individual and society.
These experiments in film will also satellite showcase at Bunjil Place and Metro Arts in Meajin (Brisbane).
Credits
Artists: Nithya Iyer and Vlad Mizikov
Cello: Roxanna Albayati
Image credit: “An Experiment in Intervals III – Violet Desert” (2022), The Third Thing. Photo courtesy of the artists.
View Artist Biographies
The Third Thing (PT/AUS) is an arts-based research collaboration seeking to investigate experimental methodologies in the negotiation, actualisation and instrumentalisation of the body in space. Working across audio-visual, textual and performance-based mediums, they are currently interested in conjoining philosophical provocations with phenomenological practices to surface movements, sites, imageries and relationalities of alterity and futurity. Within their practice is the commitment to the notion of a utopia-of-process that necessarily works with unpredictability, uncertainty and uncanniness as a means of grappling with existential thresholds. The Third Thing is comprised of Nithya Iyer and Vlad Mizikov.
Partners
Body-Cites is generously supported by Creative Victoria.