THE MECHANICS OF LOVE
The Mechanics of Love is a two channel video installation co-authored by Kim Coleman and Jenny Hogarth.
In the work, the artists individually record their activities on multiple cameras as they rise and prepare for a video call with one another. The two videos were made separately following the same routine, but are presented together allowing for chance encounters and synchronicities.
The Mechanics of Love is both a prequel and a response to ‘If You Can’t See My Mirrors I Can’t See You’ (IYCSMMICSY), a video co-authored by the artists ten years ago. IYCSMMICSY was a recording of a video call about the making of the work, made using screen recordings and other cameras in the early days of Skype. Live video feeds generating double-portraits were novel. There was magic in how the computer screen functioned as both a mirror and a lamp, and created an instant window into another world.
Using a video call as the basis of a work is pertinent in new ways today. The use of the video call has changed, with calls scheduled to aid daily rhythm and structure. The Mechanics of Love reflects on new kinds of aesthetics made possible through video technology alongside a consideration of the role of video technology in the process of opening up and sharing space with others.
Kim Coleman (London) is an artist working in expanded moving-image, live performance, and installation. Her projects consider affective dynamics within and between bodies, creating works that allow for the examination of how multiple perspectives or subjectivities are expressed and combine together within works created by more than one person. Kim’s work has been shown at galleries including Frac Champagne Ardenne (FR); Nottingham Contemporary (UK); Palais de Tokyo (FR); Tom of Finland Foundation (US); CIRCA Projects (UK); Tate St. Ives (UK); MSDockville (DE); Block Universe (UK); and The Showroom (UK). Kim is the recipient of numerous grants and awards, most recently Elephant Trust (2021) Arts Council England (2021) and AHRC (2018-22 for her practice-based Ph.D. at Reading School of Art). Kim is currently artist in residence at LUX (London). She teaches at the University of the Arts (UAL), London. Her work can be found at https://foundwork.art/artists/kimcoleman
Jenny Hogarth (Edinburgh) is an artist using an autofictive approach to moving image and performance, in this work she presents the fallout from her life as an artist and mother. Developing somatic practices both as forms of self-care and as premises for moving images, her videos relay a meditative flow-zone. However, interruptions facilitate unpredictable outcomes and provoke uncertainty regarding what is, and is not, ‘scripted’. Recent moving image works ‘Wild Thing’ (2019) and ‘Channelling’ (2020) were shown at Threshold Arts, Perth in March 2020. Jenny is currently artist in residence with Talbot Rice Gallery (Edinburgh) as part of the Freelands Artist Programme. She is currently creating new work for upcoming exhibitions at the Freelands Foundation (March 2022) and Talbot Rice Gallery (March 2022).
Jenny and Kim began co-authoring works in 2003 after graduating from Edinburgh College of Art. Jenny and Kim were Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Fellowship Artists 2010-2012 and LUX Associate Artists 2009/2010. Their projects include Demonstration (Tate Britain; 2003), With the Boyle family (ICA; 2007) Players (Frieze Projects; 2009); Staged (Edinburgh Art Festival; 2010), Glare (at S1; 2009), and If You Can’t See My Mirrors I Can’t See You (Serpentine Screen; 2010). The Mechanics of Love is their most recent collaboration.
Rachel Warriner is British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Her research focuses on the important contribution of activist collectives to the American feminist art movement during the 1970s. She has published on feminist art and poetry in The Irish University Review, Courtauld Books Online, Muße, and The Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry. Her book Pain and Politics in Postwar Feminist Art: Activism in the Work of Nancy Spero is forthcoming from I.B. Tauris.
Philomena Epps Philomena Epps is an independent writer, art critic, and editor living in London. Her art criticism and writing has been published by Artforum, ArtReview, Flash Art, Frieze, and The White Review, among numerous others.
Octavia Bright is a writer and speaker based in London. Octavia has completed a doctoral thesis in the Spanish department of UC entitled: ‘Cherchez la femme: Absence and Hysteria in Cet obscur objet du désir (Buñuel, 1977) La piel que habito (Almodóvar, 2011) and Caótica Ana (Medem, 2007)’, and is also the co-host of Literary Friction, a monthly literary talk show on NTS Radio.