Karin Kihlberg and Ruben Henry
(United Kingdom)

Karin Kihlberg and Reuben Henry propose experimental models for replaying and reinterpreting various scenarios. Their video installation, The Waiting Room (2006), transposes cinematic language into the context of real situations. Thus, during a residency at the New Art Gallery in Walsall, the artists transformed their studio into a movie set that replicates an anonymous waiting room. Visitors become involved with various bizarre interactions that could possibly happen as we spend our time waiting to be called. In the performance, CHNS: A Demonstration of Classic Hollywood Narrative Structure, the classic structure of the Hollywood thriller is used as the musical score for an improvisation by guitarist Bernard Falaise. Written by Karin Kihlberg and Reuben Henry, the script follows the pace of narrative suspense designed to keep viewers’ attention from the beginning to the end. As a critique of Hollywood narrative, this performance proposes a new audio version of the standard model.
Karin Kihlberg and Reuben Henry
Karin Kihlberg is born in Varberg, Sweden, in 1978
Reuben Henry is born in Trent, United Kingdom, in 1979
Live and work in Burmingham, United Kingdom
www.karinkihlberg-reubenhenry.org
Karin Kihlberg and Reuben Henry use narrative and representational devices to variously explore the participatory dimension of works that are often performative in nature.This is the case, for example, with Waiting Room (2006), a video that takes an absurdist approach to the vacuous experience of waiting.The Hitchcockian “McGuffin” becomes a vector for suspense and character interaction. The protagonists’ actions unveil territories and their flip side (what exists beyond the frame) to be interwoven spaces that eschew the conventions of linear narrative. The artists are equally fascinated with performance, be it that of the audience (Columbia, 2003) or of a guitarist (Where There is Chaos There is CHNS: A Demonstration of the Classic Hollywood Narrative System, 2005). In the latter, a film script literally serves as a score. Narrative owes everything to sequence,which represents events assingular relationships connecting cause and effect. Backtracking from effect to cause creates suspense, and there is still narrative with independent series of causes or effects, as in the compilations of Sei Shonagon or Georges Perec. When the machine runs amok, the direct link is broken and we have to retie the thread ourselves. Such strategies proliferate and intertwine in the work of Kihlberg and Henry.
CENTRE DES ARTS ACTUELS SKOL
372, STE-CATHERINE W. ESPACE 314
T: 514.398.9322
[AUG. 31, 2007 – SEPT. 29, 2007]
OPENING & SOUND PERFORMANCE FRIDAY SEPTEMBER 07, 2007 AT 9 PM | TUESDAY TO SATURDAY, 12 PM TO 5 PM
ADDED TO THE PROGRAM: PUBLIC TALK BY PATRICE DUHAMEL SATURDAY SEPTEMBER 15, 2007 AT 3 PM: NARRATIVE ISSUES IN THE WORKS OF KARIN KIHLBERG & REUBEN HENRY AND IN HIS OWN INSTALLATION “LE SURCROÎT,” PRESENTED AT MAISON DE LA CULTURE NOTRE-DAME-DE-GRÂCE