Architecture of an Atom
2011 – 2017
Architecture of an Atom is a trans-media gesammtkunstwerk. Made from 2011-2017, the structure and themes of this polyphonic love story are modeled upon the form of an atom.
“Haven’t we all had the experience of feeling powerless or in a permanent state of discovery, when as an adult, we learn another language, or when we spend time in another culture? Our reduced vocabulary forces us to deal with a reduced level of communication. Architecture of an Atom becomes the anatomy of a composite humanity.” – Marie de Brugerolle (French art historian, and author of Guy de Cointet’s Five Sisters, John Baldessari)
[a feature film]
Feature film, main story line/ half of the ‘nucleus’ of project. Shot in August 2013 in Lyon and the French Alps and in Dec 2012 in Winnipeg, Canada. Video and 16 mm film. Languages: French, English, Finnish.
More information available here and upon request.
Recent Presentations:
MUSEE D’ART CONTEMPORAIN DE LYON MARCH 20-22, 2015
CENTRE D’ART CONTEMPORAIN DE GENEVE FEB 19-MARCH 15, 2015
ACEART IN WINNIPEG, CANADA NOV 26
MODERNA MUSEUM IN STOCKHOLM, OCT 31, 2014
[a comic art book]
This experimental comic book shows two women, Frida and Cohl, best friends forever, depart for a journey of adventure
from Winnipeg to France. There, they get caught in a psychological torrent as they integrate into a group of displaced
‘adult-children’ and move into an abandoned pool in the Alps. In their creative escape from a fantasy of an impending
war, they find a syncretic wind instrument-a venus, that drives the group into death worlds generating a new “infinite
whistle” spiritual logic.
This comic book, that is part of the transmedia universe, Architecture of an Atom, is a trans-media artwork in itself; each chapter is an artistic body of ideas that present a fictional story and subvert the form of comics and literature in its collision with other art forms. The series of drawings, prints, and paintings use and diffuse traditional comics vocabulary. Harkening to early forms of comics such as the illuminated manuscript, graffiti drawings on the cave wall, and tapestries, the story transforms and splits apart, re-formed for reading. The reader undertakes a treacherous quest of tragic fiction and poetry.
[a series of infinite whistle performance films]
This series of short films, videos and performances are globally shot and act as ‘electrons’ to the transmedia universe. After the initial film shoot and/or performance, each film is reconstructed with sound score performance events in other places with musicians from its home country. The results are disjointed, collaborative films portraying fragmentary narratives. Investigating place with the knowledge that ‘authentically’ portraying a place is a fallacy, the subject of this series is the construction of conflict through the process of filmmaking. The continuous element is the personified icon, “The Infinite Whistle,” a character based upon the ancient sculpture of the Venus of Willendorf, ancient whistles, and earthwork performances of Ana Mendieta played by a local person in each place.
[an epilogue opera]
The epilogue Dance Ballad Compulsive Tribulations, synthesizes the aleotoric and perscriptive processes of Architecture of an Atom. A circular opera, it comprises an installation, and a comic book that is also a script for a play. A version was exhibited at De Ateliers in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, May 17-29, 2016.
