À la folie/To Insanity

source: weekendamsterdamart
Video/installation: Witness of a Kafkaesk drama
Multimedia artist Alex Verhaest (winner of the GoldenNica Ars Electronica 2015) has been invited to show her newest interactive video installation in which she elaborates on the end of a love affair.

Gregor and Grete don’t understand one another anymore. Their common language, which used to be based on love, has disappeared. She accuses him of becoming a sickening crustacean, while he says she’s degenerated into some kind of mollusc. Through a failing memory and ever-changing versions of the same story, the viewer and characters become embroiled in a false history.
In making the interactive video-installation A la folie / To insanity, experimental filmmaker Alex Verhaest was inspired by the characters Gregor and Grete from the novel The Metamorphosis by Franz Kafka. In the world created by Verhaest, metamorphosis – from human into crustacean or mollusc – can also be taken very literally. Not capable of putting their own feelings into words, Gregor and Grete are left with few choices but to wither away. The longer you watch Verhaest’s alienating video installation, the more the almost classical tableaux vivants come to life. A sensor registers how long you have been standing in front of the screen, indirectly determining the extent to which the animated characters tell their story. The story grows as the viewer interacts with the work – as does Gregor and Grete’s fury. And trying to play the silent witness won’t stop you getting your hands dirty.
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source: vimeo
Verhaest’s work is largely focused on language, story and the impossibility of communication. The basis of each project is a highly narrative script, existing or newly written, around which she creates a body of work by analyzing its storyline and exploring the limits of what constitutes communicable language. Verhaest’s highly pictorial work operates on the juxtaposition of painting and video, each new project being an investigation into unorthodox contemporary technology.
During her MFA year, Verhaest travelled to China where she discovered the Asian hacker subculture. She was invited to participate in a six-month residency at island6 Arts Center in Shanghai where she joined the former artist collective ‘Platform for Urban Investigations’. She then travelled to Mexico DF, Eindhoven and Salvador da Bahia where she participated in group-shows of the collective at the Museo de la Ciudad de Mexico, the Van Abbe Museum and the Museo de Arte Moderna. In 2009 she decided to focus more on her own practice and to leave the collective, which resulted in participations in several group exhibitions around Belgium and the Netherlands. In September of 2013, her debut solo Temps Mort/Idle Times opened at Grimm Gallery, Amsterdam. Her work has been selected by several arts and new media festivals and competitions; i.e. the FILE electronic language festival in Sao Paolo, the New Technology Art Award in Gent, TAZ oostende and Arts Festival Watou, and her work is featured in the Akzo Nobel Collection.
Alex Verhaest recently won the prestigious Japanese Media Arts New Face Award and the Ars Electronica Golden Nica.