Fragile Syntheses
By Hilary Sample
In their latest video and photographic installation "Erehwon", taking its title and location from Samuel Butler’s satirical novel set in New Zealand, the Wilsons nest subjects of behavioral codes and medical praxes from the early twentieth century as form
In their latest video and photographic installation "Erehwon", taking its title and location from Samuel Butler’s satirical novel set in New Zealand, the Wilsons nest subjects of behavioral codes and medical praxes from the early twentieth century as forms of social control. A system of five screens, two suspended overhead, enclose the viewer within two opposing spaces. These display a filmed series of acts in which groups of young women perform gymnastic routines demonstrating the ambition to improve the population’s physical health advocated by the early eugenics movement. The exercising groups stretch amidst fields of bright blue gym mats against the backdrop of deteriorating and yellowing sanatorium wards, infamous for the specialized treatment of World War I shell shocked patients; the projections alternate between the movements of the women and their corresponding views of the dilapidated spaces surrounding them. Inscribing these forms of discipline on the public is text reminiscent of Michel Foucault’s "fields of power relations". Four evocative photographs of the abandoned architecture and devoid of gymnasts follow the video. These images expose the reciprocal relationship between the power of institutions and the need for therapeutic agents in a society weakened by the effects of war.
Jane and Louise Wilsons’ Erehwon shows at 303 Gallery New York
September 18 — November 6, 2004
