- Performance Art
Survival-Length
Allison Lang, Emma Lang
23 June 2023 19:00–22:00
Survival-Length is a performance piece and an abstracted mental playground of the multiplicities and thresholds within the minds of twins, Emma and Allison Lang. Childhood play is mechanized by the artist duo to become superimposed onto the now, allowing the artists to playfully address the theses of the piece: How do we cope with the plurality of an instant?
The durational work created specifically for 48h Neukölln examines, with an aim to register, the depth and scope of feeling which exists ceaselessly in each instant–from sheer joy to horror, guilt to pleasure. Obscuring reality, the artists sink in to navigating and holding within their own bodies elements of the characters and concepts which have engaged their sense of wonder to play within a world the two have grown up in together. Through real-time negotiations and potentials which exist between one another, the two create a map of mazes and humour, subjugating themselves to a nuanced statement on the universal capacity for good vs. evil. Part of this game asks without words: where do you as a viewer land on the spectrum of contradiction in this instant? And how about in the instant that follows? Is this funny or cruel and can we hold both?
The durational work created specifically for 48h Neukölln examines, with an aim to register, the depth and scope of feeling which exists ceaselessly in each instant–from sheer joy to horror, guilt to pleasure. Obscuring reality, the artists sink in to navigating and holding within their own bodies elements of the characters and concepts which have engaged their sense of wonder to play within a world the two have grown up in together. Through real-time negotiations and potentials which exist between one another, the two create a map of mazes and humour, subjugating themselves to a nuanced statement on the universal capacity for good vs. evil. Part of this game asks without words: where do you as a viewer land on the spectrum of contradiction in this instant? And how about in the instant that follows? Is this funny or cruel and can we hold both?
Biography
Allison Lang, Emma Lang
Allison is a conceptual and performance artist. Through movement modalities she explores the relationship between performer and audience, endurance art and limits of softness within the body. She is a graduate of Canada's National Ballet School and has performed extensively across Canada as well as internationally.
Emma is an artist and ecologist interested in researching suppositions through a performance methodology. Through spoken word and movement, her work employs biological metaphor as an organic starting place with which to engage with philosophical paradigms.
Together, the twins enrich each others practice of creative endeavour through a symbiotic appreciation for the other. Their communal approach to their work feels rich in shared and separate experience.
Emma is an artist and ecologist interested in researching suppositions through a performance methodology. Through spoken word and movement, her work employs biological metaphor as an organic starting place with which to engage with philosophical paradigms.
Together, the twins enrich each others practice of creative endeavour through a symbiotic appreciation for the other. Their communal approach to their work feels rich in shared and separate experience.