POWER PILGRIMS
Power Pilgrims by Desearch and Revelopment
UPDATE: David Cuartielles, one fifth of the group behind Desearch and Revelopment emailed in a correction. The Power Pilgrims is actually a project by Desearch and Revelopment, of which Erik Sandelin and Magnus Torstensson of Unsworn are members. Other team members include Livia Sunesson and Otto von Busch
This is a great project by Desearch and Revelopment. Unsworn. The collaborative duo, Swedish artists Erik Sandelin and Magnus Torstensson They created thePower Pilgrims, a hilarious performance where four Amber pilgrims wearing robes held together only by recycled electromagnets must ritualistically charge themselves (meaning the battery pack powering the electromagnets) to keep their garments intact.
I love the issues the garments themselves bring up with vulnerability and the dependence we have on our technologies. Like RECOIL there is risk with consequence. With RECOIL the risk is physical, as in the potential pain and awkwardness of the garments beyond the wearer’s control. With Power Pilgrims the same lack of certainty manifests as a masochistic drive to self-exposure.
One thing that caught my attention though. It would have been cool to rig the power-up mechanism so that the brothers were chained together, so that if one recharges the others are charged too, creating a true cycle of dependency. (If one has to bare it all then they all do!) It would also be a nice visual reference to Lucy Orta and her Nexus Architecture as a sort of dark companion to her poetic and ultimately more optimistic illustration of collective interdependency.