"Army jobs:This is belonging"

Scrolling through snapchat today I was caught by surprise to see this advert by the Army. 

The message itself was positive (saying that the army was an inclusive place) but it was delivered in a very sinister way, like old war propaganda I came across in the books I've been looking at

I am so pleased to have come across  David James Armsby's dystopian animations. For me, the voiceover and music together create a real tension, making the viewer uneasy. I like the use of music to add to the narrative of the work. The work was set up to disturb from the moment the scene opens with the mother wearing the stitched mask and she begins to tell her daughter a story...you initially see the red flags and feel the discomfort of knowing that the daughter is being indoctrinated.

From 1:35-2:49 there is no speech, but the music intensifies, these are the most terrifying parts in my opinion. The visual combined with the music that just keeps increasing in volume sends a feeling of panic through me when watching this.

I will consider the above when creating my own works as this is an outstanding piece of work to me.

A description of the piece by the creator:

Welcome back to Autodale, children. Today's programming is nearly done, which means it is time for bed. But sadly, not all dreams are sweet, some are scary and full of monsters. If any night terrors haunt your sleep, children; always remember that you're safe in Autodale. There are no monsters here. This film is a sequel to my recent animated short "Being Pretty". That being said, I did try to make this work as a stand-alone story. This short was a massive undertaking. It was fun and horrible to work on. I put more hours into this short than any of my other animations (Besides Parallel). I put more detail into the backdrops, pictures and animation than I ever have before. I think this short broke me mentally. That being said; I think it may have some of the best imagery I've ever created.

I visited the English National Opera house Midsummer night's dream which was a contemporary response to the original work by Shakespeare.I had been drawn to this as a key component of my research will be miscommunication/the circulation of false information  - with an interest in what we believe and why. I recall my work in English Literature and how a Midsummer nights dream had many elements of miscommunication and deception through it's plot with a complicated love triangle and magic being used to manipulate protagonists.

The production was excellent but I actually found myself more interested in the visual components and how the set itself opened up as a large bed with huge pillows,I really got the sense of false reality through the way that the set had been put together. I liked the way that the humungous emerald green sheets of the bed were used in place of the green forest.

These are stills from "Erth" by artist John Latham. This work consists of some images Latham sources with the use of Encyclopaedia Britannica, however this is not of huge interest to me. What is however of interest to me is the artist's use of a "haunting" voice-over accompanying the static/textbook type images. This voice-over speaks about human existence from Latham's point of view. Without this element of audio, I feel the piece would be about as exciting as opening a big academic textbook. The voice provides the imagination with additional stimulus around the work. I am a big fan of audio, though I take my time when considering how to use it in final outcomes as I feel it can make a piece extremely effective or ruin the work depending on its placement and context. I like the fact that there are long (25 min) visual intervals where the "textbook" images disappear,leaving a black screen and emphasis on the audio alone. I am experimenting with the use of both visual stimulus and none at times.

C Print

38 X 48 inches

_{"They watch the moon" captures a hidden “listening station”found in the forests (West Virginia). The "listening station" is located in the heart of  the “National Radio Quiet Zone,”. Inside the Quiet Zone, radio transmissions are extremely restricted: "omnidirectional" and powerful transmissions (such as wireless internet devices and FM radio stations) are forbidden.}

_{The listening station was designed in part to observe the phenomenon called “moonbounce.” Moonbounce involves capturing communications and signals from around the world as they slip into space, hit the moon, and are reflected back towards Earth.}

_{The photograph by Paglen taken is a long exposure under the full moon light.}

I like this work as it captures something that would have otherwise remained covert. In the middle of the forest, there are complex structures and beams of light. It is strange that somewhere so remote has been created to capture global communication signals. I feel that this work could form the basis of many conspiracy theories. Somewhere out in the forest, there are powerful hidden organisations with unknown power and control.

Prototype for a Nonfunctional Satellite

The above work by Paglen is a prototype for a nonfunctional satellite the artist wants to place in "low-earth" orbit  orbit to create a sculpture in the sky. I spoke with a classmate about this piece and we are in agreement that we think this work addresses perception management. The fact that people will look up into the sky and see what they believe to be a "standard" star, however this is really a manufactured sculpture  placed there to deceive.

 Artist Amalia Picca's "Ears to speak of" consists of large cardboard sculptural "replicas" of "listening radars" (also known as "listening ears") that were positioned on the coast in Kent in the 1920's-1930's. They were constructed to detect sounds of aircrafts and aerial attacks. As technology progressed, these "listening radars" were left as purposeless ruins or as Picca describes them "monuments of failure". From my understanding Picca constructed the large sculptural replicas out of cardboard, a material that absorbs sound, to highlight the uselessness of the items.

I find the work frustrating in a way as these are items that once served a purpose and now serve no purpose, they take up so much space and yet provide nothing. But in a way, I feel that the artist might want us to react to the work like this.

The thing I like the most about this work is the context, more than the visual end result. The idea of "listening ears" being hidden and monitoring sounds without the general public's knowledge is intriguing and it is highly relevant to this project since I am thinking about conspiracy theories and  power and control - why do we believe what we believe? Who makes us believe? Are we making decisions for ourselves? or do we just believe that we are?

The theatre is one of my favourite places to go to seek inspiration from layouts and presentation to the delivery of messages and story-telling. Today I went to see an adaptation of one of my favourite stories (Coraline). Coraline is a dystopia tale. The protagonist (Coraline) moves to a brand-new house  where she becomes very bored with the "regular" life she is leading with work-a-holic parents. She discovers a small unusual door that is filled with bricks during the day. Coraline becomes obsessed with this little door...though she hears many voices of warning "don't go through the door, Coraline", she dismisses this warning (from ghosts) and at night she travels through the little door which is no longer bricked. Coraline enters an alternate realm which appears to be exactly the same as her home, though her parents have buttons sewn into their eyes and appear to be fun and spoil her with gifts and games (these are her "other" parents). Though she is unaware of this, Coraline is in great danger. The grass is not greener on the other side as she believes it is. The place she has grown to love, with her "other parents" is a dystopic trap. She encounters three ghost children that warn Coraline not to have buttons sewn into her eyes as the other mother wants her to.

What I find so interesting about the story is the fact that Coraline puts herself in danger repeatedly, no matter how many times she has heard verbal warnings, she does not believe them. Until she sees the ghosts physically and they warn her AGAIN...she finally believes this time. This presents the idea that you need to "see to believe". This has given me something to think about in the way of my own work.

"Commissioned by Arts Catalyst, Escape Vehicle no.6 started as a live event. The live audience first witnessed the launching of a weather balloon with a domestic chair dangling in space beneath it. Once the apparatus had disapeared into the sky they then watched a live video relay from the weather balloon as it jouneyed from the ground to the edge of space (30km up)"

"Now presented as a non-live video work, the footage shows the chair first rushing away from the fields and roads, ascending through clouds and finally (against the curvature of the earth and the blackness of space) beginning to disintegrate. The chilling nature of the film is that the empty chair invites the audience to imagine taking a journey to an uninhabitable realm where it is impossible to breathe, the temperature is minus 60 below and the sky now resembles the blackness of space".

I am interested in the section which says "the empty chart invites the audience to imagine taking a journey", it makes me think that through absence where there might usually be a person, anybody viewing the work might be able to place themselves in that empty space/relate.

"The glamour of the space race, typified by John F Kennedy’s 1961 exhoratation to go to the moon'.

"In a wilderness at the heart of Berlin a strange apparition occured. Mobile Research Station no.1 was a curious hybrid – half hi-tech Antarctic Research Station / half rusty-broken-dumpster. Using a standard building-waste container as its basis, the station nevertheless formed a luxurious designer-pod, to be used by an eccentric set of researchers. Rather than researching the frozen wastes of Antarctica or the moons of Saturn, the invited artist/researchers undertook investigations into the surrounding wilderness and urban zones of uncertainty that still lie at the centre of Berlin".

The research station was commissioned by SKULPTURENPARK BERLIN_ZENTRUM ( http://www.skulpturenpark.org ) for their project Wunderland.

Frozen is definitely one of the most impactful things I have seen. I am glad I got to see this during this projects. The play follows a serial killer and pedophile, a criminal psychologist and the mother of  a victim (a child that is killed and sexually abused). It was a deeply disturbing yet effective production. I was drawn to this as I knew the play would be heavily based on monologues and accounts from the characters. The thing that stood out to me the most was the way that through the criminal's description of accounts, he made the audience question the judgement that he was facing, almost pitying him. He had moments where he expressed his vulnerability and said things like "I never wanted to hurt her", but then in different sections he would spiral out of control, allowing the audience to change their minds and feel angered by him. I like the way this play toys with belief, at some points you begin to believe that the criminal is not responsible for the crimes he is committing, that he has a chemical/scientific imbalance (as suggested by the Criminal psychologist). However, towards the end, the play shifts completely and the audience are lead away from the belief that the murder is not his fault. The criminal psychologists gives up on the concept that the criminal is not responsible for the crimes and concludes that he is simply evil and is responsible entirely for all of the crimes he has committed. The whole play was a rollercoaster of belief, disbelief and confusion as to whether you were right or wrong to believe a certain side of the argument. I found this highly relevant for my research about what makes us believe. 

I decided to go and see Sondra Perry's "Typhoon coming on" at the Serpentine. The trip was quite spur of the moment, I hadn't really read into Perry's work before going. I found that the theme of the exhibition on the whole (the exploration of race and identity)was not something that would have an impact on this project I am undertaking. However, I really enjoyed the exhibition and it turns out the visit was very worthwhile for my current project. I enjoyed the way Perry worked with sound. Walking through the space with Pink waves, I walked in at a part where I could hear Eartha Kitt "I want to be evil" echoing, until I was greeted by the monitor with Eartha's video against a large bold backdrop.  I feel that Perry used sound very effectively through the exhibition, making use of space and the way sound travels through space. Since I am exploring the circulation of information and what makes us believe in this information, I see myself working with sound a lot and am inspired by what I have seen at this exhibition.

After going home and searching on vimeo to watch the resident evil monitor video in full again, I noticed the use of accounts, which is something I am doing at the moment also.

Resident Evil, 2016  (Above)
3D animation created with Blender open-source software, video on monitor on credenza
17:29 min.
Images: sondraperry.com/resident-evil

Sources:
Ramsey Orta interview on DemocracyNow.org
Posted by DemocracyNow.org
democracynow.org/2016/1/12/why_is_ramsey_orta_man_who

Baltimore: Geraldo confronted over Fox 'News' biased reporting #FreddieGray
posted by Mavaddat Javid
youtube.com/watch?v=OwHvCy-a-Pg

Protester (Kwame Rose) Who Confronted Geraldo: Won’t Let ‘Outside Agitators’ at Fox Lie About Baltimore (Fox News Broadcast)
posted by benalvino1860
youtube.com/watch?v=ErQVAm4-okk

I Want To Be Evil - Eartha Kitt
Live television performance
posted by mrfnk
youtube.com/watch?v=SS02GeKuWQ4

Interview with my mother about the 1992 armed police entry into our home in Perth Amboy, New Jersey.

Korryn Gaines stop by police in March 2016
instagram.com/shesyourmajesty/?hl=en

The Stylstics: People Make The World Go Round
youtube.com/watch?v=ON5JLJRfFrg

Footage of protester with police vehicle

The audio includes soundtracks pulled from the films Aliens and Predator

Still showing accounts (above)

"In the work two monitors are displayed at head height on pedestals. The head and shoulders of a young black man appear on one; on the other is an older white woman. They both speak the same one hundred phrases, which are the repeated conjugation of the verb 'to be' linked with the term 'good boy': 'I am a good boy. You are a good boy. We are good boys' and so on. They each go through the sequence five times, beginning in a flat neutral tone, and becoming increasingly animated and intense until by the fifth recitation they appear very angry. Their techniques of delivery are quite different, and result in a slippage of time, so that played on a continuous loop, the two tapes become out of sequence. 'Because they are actors, it's not autobiographical, it's not real anger, but pretending to be angry and they are pretty good at it, but maybe not really convincing.' (Nauman quoted in Bruce Nauman 1998, p.104)".

Today I watched  the original film based on George Orwell's dystopia 1984. I was motivated to watch this when thinking about us, the public as consumers of the news and how we are influenced by agents of control. 1984 presents a dystopian future where people are controlled under a totalitarian regime and are stripped of their own critical thoughts (personally I think this is happening to some extent already).    George Orwell's 1984 is ultimately a conspiracy about the future direction of the world, a controversial one.  The whole film made me think of Karl Marx's idea of the "opium of the people" something that suppresses rebellion and forces people to comply, "big brother" serves that purpose.

Telescreens (televisions that also record as security cameras with microphones) are placed everywhere that the protagonist (Winston Smith) goes...thinking about society and the way we actually live, it is highly rare to enter into a home or a space where we do not have technology that has dedicated channels for mainstream news. I  could experiment with the idea of the hologram inspired by 1984 and Orwell's conspiracy by having a strange device in a room presenting information (for Orwell it was the telescreen,for me it will be my hologram projector).  1984 made me think that any space with technology connected to mainstream news is unsafe, it is a breeding ground for propaganda and indoctrination.

Long story short: The protagonist (Winston) loves a girl named Julia, they sneak around to be together but this goes horribly wrong and the two are separated. Winston is tortured mentally and is threatened by his greatest fear (rats being released onto his face), at which point he exclaims "Do it to Julia". He is successfully indoctrinated, has lost the person he loved and has turned to Big brother as his opium.

A part of my PPP was considering who is susceptible to believing the news? Since news shows at different times all day long, perhaps one group of people who would be susceptible are the retired/those that spend a lot of time at home. As a result of free time, those that are retired/home often might find themselves spending more time and finding purpose in filling their days watching the news as a way of keeping "up to date". Quite like Winson (the protagonist of 1984) turned his thoughts to obeying "big brother" as his life's purpose.

"Your Double-Lighthouse Projection consists of two large, free-standing, circular chambers made of out stainless steel and wooden panels. Installed in close proximity to each other in a gallery, the chambers are of slightly different sizes – one is taller and wider than the other – but each one has a thin gap in its otherwise 360 degree wall that serves as an entrance into its interior. From the outside, the chambers appear plain, their flat-pack fabrication alluded to by the vertical panelling. On the inside, however, the walls of both chambers are lined top to bottom and all the way around with a seamless reflective projection panel behind which is a matrix of coloured lights controlled by a computerised light board. As the chambers do not have ceilings, the coloured light projected from the walls escapes out into the darkened gallery.

Attracted by the colourful glow emanating from the chambers, viewers enter the circular spaces and experience a slowly changing display of pink, purple and blue light. The reflective panel serves to intensify the light to the extent that it dissolves the wall into an ungraspable glow. In that it surrounds the viewer and therefore occupies their entire field of vision, the light has the effect of disorientating spatial awareness by erasing the perceptual distinction between foreground and background. Only the floor beneath the viewer’s feet can be perceived to be entirely solid. Space is therefore registered more accurately by bodily movement than by vision, which entails that the perceptual disorientation is magnified in the smaller chamber where movement is more restricted".

Video

This scene in "Trolls" is what I think of when thinking about living in a dystopian world. In a way, I feel a sense of inspiration taken from Orwell's 1984 theory in this children's animation. Everybody appears to be moving painfully slowly, seeming uninspired and robotic, the slime green hue helps to lower the mood further.

"The story of a doctor's extraordinary work in the Sixties with a group of catatonic patients he finds languishing in a Bronx hospital. Speculating that their rigidity may be akin to an extreme form of Parkinsonism, he seeks permission from his skeptical superiors to treat them with L-dopa, a drug that was used to treat Parkinson's disease at the time".

I watched this film last night. 

10 Cloverfield lane is a film I set out to watch during this project. This film was a great watch for this project as one of the main characters (a man) has the protagonist trapped in his underground shelter. Throughout the film we do not know whether he has abducted her or is saving her from the toxic air outside that he claims exists. The film goes back and forth with the protagonist believing at times and other times challenging this.

-Accounts about people's experiences being "Awakened". Claims this is due to a medicine "L-Dopa"

 Though I would not relate this exhibition necessarily to my project. It was good to go and see all of these works in person. I had written about some works by Jenny Saville in my previous project so I enjoyed seeing these in person. I was very kindly gifted a Tate membership card for the first time, it is so great being able to show the card at exhibition doors and go through straight away. I am able to see much more now.

 Despite me having mentioned that this exhibition was not directly related to my current project, this (above) quote by Bacon drew some links to my work. I am curious about the bit where Bacon says "leaving a trail of the human presence". Whilst looking at news reports and whether people believe these or not, it all links back to human presence.

(228.6cm x 121.3cm)

My favourite piece I saw was "Sleeping by the Lion Carpet" (1996) by Lucian Freud.  I am drawn to the way Freud presents the way he scrutinises his "sitters" when painting them. Ensuring that he includes every detail (trying to present them truthfully) however I feel that in doing so, there is some exaggeration as a result. Take this painting of Tilly, I feel that he has tried to be extremely objective when painting her, though the outcome looks slightly exaggerated with every bulge on her body being emphasised and made more prominent for effect.

"Space, Time and Four Dimensions is a large, horizontally oriented abstract painting on a rectangular plywood board by the British artist Victor Pasmore. The board is mostly painted white, with the grain of the wood showing through the surface. It features a loose composition consisting of black lines, some of which are thick and solid and others thin and scratchy, circular forms in blue, green and black, and diffuse dark blue patches that roughly comprise two rounded, arrow-like forms pointing towards one another. The composition runs broadly horizontally across the painting’s centre, although two thick black lines, each with a shorter line protruding from one side, emerge vertically from the top and bottom edges of the canvas towards its central horizontal axis. Various contrasts can be discerned between the shapes in the painting: for example, solid blocks of colour are juxtaposed with softer tones, and thick, smooth lines contrast with thin, uneven ones. In places the thin, meandering black lines connect other shapes in the composition together, and a cluster of these in the left part of the painting forms the letters ‘VP’. The work is mounted in a grey hardboard frame that has a plastic glaze".

"With its references to time, space and the fourth dimension, the title of this work reflects Pasmore’s interest in modern science, particularly physics, which was central to his work from the 1950s onwards. Although first discussed in the eighteenth century, the notion that space has a fourth dimension was fully developed by the German mathematician Hermann Minkowski in the early twentieth century, providing the basis for the German physicist Albert Einstein’s theories of relativity that followed shortly after. In 1995 Pasmore discussed the importance of such scientific developments to art, writing that ‘with the visual and objective world rendered ambiguous by modern scientific ideas like relativity, [and] four dimensions ... its representation in Painting also became ambiguous; a condition which led to increasing subjective and irrational freedom’ (quoted in Marlborough Fine Art Gallery 1995, unpaginated). Pasmore’s claim that these innovations changed art’s relationship with representation may have been a reference to abstract art, which he advocated and consistently practised from the 1950s onwards, and his reference to ‘irrational freedom’ might also partly explain the relatively haphazard composition of Space, Time and Four Dimensions".

 I visited the English National Opera house Midsummer night's dream which was a contemporary response to the original work by Shakespeare.I had been drawn to this as a key component of my research will be miscommunication/the circulation of false information - with an interest in what we believe and why. I recall my work in English Literature and how a Midsummer nights dream had many elements of miscommunication and deception through it's plot with a complicated love triangle and magic being used to manipulate protagonists.

The production was excellent but I actually found myself more interested in the visual components and how the set itself opened up as a large bed with huge pillows,I really got the sense of false reality through the way that the set had been put together. I liked the way that the humungous emerald green sheets of the bed were used in place of the green forest.

After reading a bit about Dodwell's play in a Frieze article, I decided to contact him with a few questions of my own. I want to know Dodwell's opinions on conspiracy theory and why he links the suicide to the disappearance of the Malaysian airways flight. I have emailed him about this and have also asked him about who we choose to believe and why. I look forward to hearing his responses and will post them on here as soon .

My response from Rich Dodwell:

Dear Marianna ,

Visited Photographers gallery today to look for more exhibitions relating to my project.

Quick notes about piece:

 Interviewer is asking "Can you tell me what colour these are?"

Interviewee says "they are both white" and continues to believe (after being challenged by the interviewer) that the two sculptures (below) are both white.

Synopsis: In this animated feature by noted Japanese director Hayao Miyazaki, 10-year-old Chihiro (Rumi Hiiragi) and her parents (Takashi Naitô, Yasuko Sawaguchi) stumble upon a seemingly abandoned amusement park. After her mother and father are turned into giant pigs, Chihiro meets the mysterious Haku (Miyu Irino), who explains that the park is a resort for supernatural beings who need a break from their time spent in the earthly realm, and that she must work there to free herself and her parents.

I have seen Spirited away many times, but only when watching it during this project I noticed something which I find very fitting. Yubaba (the "villain") traps her baby (a giant, talking character) in a room forever, controlling the "baby" by telling them that if they leave the room and go outside they will die. Up until the end of the film, the "baby" believes Yubaba and does not challenge this - until the protagonist proves this is a lie. It is very fitting how in this film, believing in something false has such a profound impact on somebody's way of living.

Performance of Janice Kerbel’s DOUG (2014) at the 2015 Turner Prize exhibition in Tramway, Glasgow.

"Nearby, a large gallery room sits empty but for a few screen-prints of a score pinned to the walls, and a cluster of black music stands. A few minutes later, a choir of six singers and a conductor enter the space and proceed to perform a 24-minute opera".

I have been drawn to this work as I discovered that the Opera was used to tell a story about a series of disastrous events in the life of a character that Kerbel invented,Doug. This Opera tells the story of Doug falling down the stairs,choking and even being struck by lightning. I would have liked to have seen this piece in person. This work stands out to me as Kerbel's work tells an entire story through music alone.

Untitled Chairs (2014-15)

"Ten chairs, based on Marcel Breuer’s design classic Cesca, sit in the gallery room in different formations: In twos, threes, alone. The artist has sewn fluffy and glamorous fur coats into the backrests. The juxtaposition of the common chair and luxurious coats plays on the gesture of claiming a seating or a spot in a public area, in a bar, cinema, on the train. The gesture is certainly familiar, we’ve all done that."

16mm film, 9:38 (5 min excerpt)

"Haus Atlantis conjures a glittering sci-fi fairy tale from one of the stranger corners of Nazi Germany’s cultural history. Through voice over, we learn of a people marooned in “a psychic disaster zone”. The Deep Sea Age has ended. In travelling to the bottom of the sea to plumb its mysteries, man has altered his consciousness. Now the oceans have retreated and the sub-aquatic research centre has long been abandoned to nature. Encrusted with coral, its secret architecture lies exposed to the elements. 

It nonetheless seems to exert a power over the population. While mutant kelp engulfs houses and streets, a kind of seasickness has taken hold, spreading from the few to the many, all convinced that they once lived in Atlantis and dived next to Neptune and Noah. The afflicted withdraw to the sanatorium where they lie in darkened rooms and turn mystical, enraptured by visions of new species of starfish. The only visibly active members of this society are masked relic hunters who scour the dusty seabeds for the skeletons of dead mariners, as treasured as the bones of medieval saints.

The visual accompaniment to this, progresses through old black and white photographs of bombed-out streets and footage of marshy countryside. Ruined buildings and boats are abandoned in a desert. Busts and statues of classical gods and heroes revolve against darkness, cast adrift from chronology or geographic context. The recurring image is the interior of a building as magnificent as an ocean liner. Its treasures include a blue mosaic barrel vault glass ceiling that curves above a vast hall and a spiral staircase bathed in watery green light. In a clue to the location’s present-day function 21^st century businesspeople breakfast beneath chandeliers that hang like frozen jellyfish.

This is the film’s real world lynchpin, Haus Atlantis, an Expressionist building built in 1931 in Bremen, designed by the artist Bernard Hoetger and commissioned by businessman Ludwig Roselius in order to “restore the self esteem of the German people”.

*Note: A building being used to restore self-esteem, a distraction from  other more important matters perhaps?*

Hoetger was inspired by Roselius’s belief that Germans originated in Atlantis and were thus the founders of civilisation. The building was conceived as an exhibition space for his collection of prehistoric artefacts and was meant to function as a cultural foundation combining Nordic mythology, pseudo-science and futuristic architecture that aimed to embody racial superiority. 

Today, after being heavily damaged during WWII, Haus Atlantis remains in a ghostly state of incompletion and now forms part of a Radisson Hotel where it is being used and rented for conferences. While the monstrous sculpture of Odin that once graced its façade has gone, traces of its original purpose remain, including the glass-roofed Hall of Heaven (Himmelsaal) to which visitors would be lead on a spiritual journey from the bottom of the sea, where the ruins of Atlantis lay. It was essentially a temple to the superiority of the Germanic race, whose revival, according to Hoetger and Roselius, would be achieved through the power of its ancient past.

The notorious 1937 exhibition Degenerate Art, organised by the Nazi party to lampoon modern art, has cemented an art historical narrative that Nazism excluded the new ideas of expressionism and irrationality that Hoetger’s art embraced. Projects like Haus Atlantis however tell a different story, pointing to a time when Hoetger’s concerns overlapped with a national socialist interest in Nordic identity, soil and ancient forms. 

Like its architectural touchstone, the film Haus Atlantis weaves together fragments of history and myth into a seductive fantasy. It circles a moment of flux, before events had been fixed in history books and ancient myths and occult ideas held prominent figures like Roselius and Hoetger in thrall. Mirroring their unconventional approach to the past, the film freely picks and mixes shades from bygone ages with visions of a yet to come civilisation, creating something new out of the old and the futuristic".

Bonnie Camplin’s Patterns, based on The Military Industrial Complex, a work Camplin presented the previous year at the South London Gallery. From my understanding, the work appears to be a study room with an extensive range of publications (some of which are conspiracy theories). Alongside the publications are five video interviews presented on monitors, the subjects of these interviews explain their strange experiences - one being alien abduction.

I found through reading the Turner Prize article on Artnet that Camplain's work explores the concept of “consensus reality”—what we take for being real and credible and what we disavow .  I am pleased to have come across this new terminology as I have been actively exploring consensus reality through my own work, struggling to find the term that corresponds to this action.