An Experiment in Intervals III - Violet Desert
The Third Thing, An Experiment in Intervals III - Violet Desert, 2022. Two channel video, 10 minutes 16 seconds, 3 chapters. Cello: Roxanna Albayati
Work originally made for TERRITORY by PADA studios (PT) x Sluice (UK) 2022
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. This work asks: Can monstrosity invite opportunity? Can we actualise an identity alternative to that imposed upon us by ideology? Employing the concept of an 'Interval' as a methodology, this work explores the capacity of the live agentic body to improvise a re-imagining of this historical narrative. 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.
The Third Thing - An Experiment in Intervals III - Violet Desert is presented as part of the Body-Cities program as curated by Centre Of Projection Art artistic director Priya Namana for FRAME: a biennial of dance 2023, and can be seen on the 27, 28 February, 1, 2, 4, 5 March on the Bunjil Place Outdoor Screen.
The Third Thing
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.
An Experiment in Intervals III - Violet Desert (2022), The Third Thing. Photo courtesy of the artists_3
An Experiment in Intervals III - Violet Desert (2022), The Third Thing. Photo courtesy of the artists_2
