influence, habit & agency
Ella Phillips
Ha ha!
Humour forms part of my methodology, it began to emerge in an early video sculpture that explored voyeurism, Playing the Fall (2014). The bespectacled viewing cage creates what Simon Critchley describes as ‘the gap between being a body and having a body’ (On Humour); a physically uncomfortable dialogue between the audience and the screen with a dash of the absurd thrown in.
Miranda July, Laure Provost and Heather Phillipson, have created hyperrealities with their humorous treatments of the everyday; guided through narrative signage in The Hallway (Miranda July, installation, 2008) and invited on a sensual-linguistic exploration of the alphabet (Heather Phillipson, video 11 min 55, A Is to D what E Is to H). The comical becomes a tool, able to reveal ‘that an accepted pattern has no necessity’ (Mary Douglass). Through a humorous, conflicted narrative, This is a Line/ This is a Memory/ This is a Pixel (video, 4min 58, 2014) destabilises how memory, time and image might be understood. Illustrating how absurdity might be used to challenge engrained systems of behavioural influence, not as continued propaganda but as a question or thought experiment.