Napoleon and Alexandra, 2017. Site specific installation, with performances and film. Made in collabaration with Anna Ekros

Napoleon and Alexandra happened when Anna and I met. We were both at an impasse; Anna just finished her studies, she was not sure whether she could stay in New York, and what to do next. I was about to lose my studio, the beloved magical space that I had for seven years. I always told the visitors of this studio: “You are imagining this place, it is not really possible that it exists.”

We thought we had to make a whoopee to make some sense out of all of these unknowns. One night when we were at it, V. came in. She was in particularly eloquent mood, she lied on a mattress  and started talking to a pine cone, pretending that the pine cone was my landlord. She was trying to convince him- pine cone- the landlord to let me stay in the studio. I recorded that ode to reason and it became an essential part of the film.

 

This illogical game we played, came to a very logical conclusion: the piece is a nostalgia for the times we never had but made to happen and the longing for what we had at the moment but were about to loose.