“Respawn (2014) Official Trailer” is a online exhibition project realised on LIAUX.ORG (Palermo, Italy), presented by MÉLANGE on invitation of Francesca Verga.
This project was conceived in collaboration between the artist and the team of MÉLANGE. Reacting to a video is essentially the same as to any other art work. Our challenge with moving images, or animated ones, are the same. Symbols, references, anecdotes are interwoven as well as ideas of abstraction. An old school method of trying to point at all those referential systems, which is as old as the production of art, was chosen to make “Respawn (2014) Official Trailer”. This show functions as a reader and in depth, or even way to deep, understanding of the artist work “Respawn”. The way the information is set up in the video, you can either choose to ignore or embrace the information handed to you. This special trailer version, compared to a regular movie trailer, does not only hint towards the plot and important elements of their approach in Respawn, but lays them bare. By offering all available material, references, inspirations and quotations the piece becomes transparent in an uncomfortable way, by revealing all of its potential secrets, easter eggs and other small hints that might have gone unnoticed. The question at hand in this exhibition is how much information do we provide, or have to provide with the artworks shown. Do these details necessarily add to the story or are they part of the conceptual process and can distract from the pieces unique experience. This show is therefore an experiment on letting go or getting overwhelmed.
Eloïse Bonneviot (b. 1986, lives and works in Paris) & Anne de Boer (b. 1987, lives and work in Paris) occasionally produce collaborative work, either under their name, as the Mycological Twist or with a collective called The Hard-Core.
About Respawn (2014): Respawn is a film that describes a fictional story told from the perspective of a mushroom. Taking narratives that belong to human histories as a template, a science-fictional drama unfolds in which a mushroom finds itself as a driving force as a longer lasting historical entity.
Concept: Eloïse Bonneviot & Anne de Boer, in conversation with MÉLANGE