SOS/Animals/Action is a four-channel video filmed in one take on four Snorricam mounted to the actors playing animals and two handheld gorilla-style cameras. It was filmed in the industrial area of Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in the winter. The 12-minute video tells the story of four animals lost in their native habitat, turning on each other in a hopeless contest for survival. Are they animals? Are they even real? And why is their landscape no longer recognizable?
This video is based on a section of Big Art Group’s live performance, SOS. SOS began as an investigation into the nature of sacrifice within a supersaturated, hyper-acquisitive society. Set in a forest of technology the performance unwinds through overlapping abstract narratives. Animals lost in their native habitat turn on each other in a hopeless contest for survival. Revolutionaries broadcasting from a skeletal studio implode under the pressure of their own rhetoric, and technology addicts enmeshed in a self-created universe seek escape from a tightening web of perception. As these environments collide and overturn, the stage transforms into a celebration of chaos, verging towards the freedom of annihilation.
Video:
Presentations:
bb15 2024 (Linz, Austria) – upcoming in November
Volksbühne Videothek 2024 (Berlin, Germany)
Hungry Eyes Festival 2023 (Giessen, Germany)
Hungry Eyes Festival 2022 (Giessen, Germany)
Segal Film Festival on Theatre and Performance 2015 (NYC, NY)
Lille Opera House 2013 (Lille, France)
Credits:
Created by Big Art Group with Caden Manson, Jemma Nelson, Kathleen Amshoff, David Commander, Edward Stresen-Reuter, Michael Helland, and Willie Mullins.