AREA 7073 – work as work and the work of making art
Henrietta Hale and Marina Collard come together as two independent performance artists under the name Area 7073 to make video/performance which addresses work as necessity, making little or no distinction between working to work to make art work. Their projects frame their real-life situations through practice of engagement with and documenting of ordinary activity; putting a lens on and making visible the toil, tedium and banality of the kinds of activities that serve a necessity, the stuff they just have to get done. Through a process of asserting and recognising the patterns, habits, comforts and frustrations of familiar domestic labour they raise disturbing questions about the hyper governed, mass produced, institutionalised thought systems they exist within and unravel their political implications.
The connection between performance and the digital archive/documentation/digital translations of liveness is central to their practice as a form of reflective resistance and a way of gaining a potent space of friendship that pierces through the confines of the arduous and mundane. Their work has developed from an interest in visibility and marginalised activity and/or status, committing to working outside of the confines of studio led practices and institutions. With attention to rhythmic, repetitious patterning, this visual and choreographic video performance reveals particular perspectives on ordinary activity, re-inhabiting life situations as a temporary occupation.
During their residency, Henrietta and Marina will focus on their project Dream Clean Clean Dream. With a number of already constructed edits, their multi-screen video event will take over the studio as a way of exploring its performance potential. This project takes an aesthetic approach to cleaning and maintenance rituals. Concerned with rhythm, surface texture, choreography and colour, we create a lens through which emergent and pertinent questions of labour, domesticity, progress, illusion, perversion and companionship may appear. Our residency proposes a period of play with the frames of projected video and live action. The video work follows two artists/cleaners or cleaners/artists inhabiting the rituals involved in the running of a Bed and Breakfast in France over a 2 year period. At times it has the quality of video/diary, at other times documentary interview and other moments are solely concerned with surface lines and texture. The live action creates another filter through which to make sense.
On the 18th February at 1800hours, we would be delighted to show some experiments and share a bit about this process and understand a bit more about how spectators are implicated in the work.
