2021
Until the Last of Our Labours Is Done
Video, 25 min
In Until the Last of Our Labours Is Done, lone figures journey through a series of otherwise deserted natural landscapes while manipulating various objects they travel with.
The protagonists’ journeys are at once a kind of obstacle course on varied terrain, a set of lo-fi physics experiments and a kind of preposterous puppet animation in which humans work to give objects a semblance of movement and life. Rolling, tumbling and dragging a motley collection of detritus – from buckets, pipes, hoses and tyres to scraps of wood, fabric, rope and wire – Horvat’s performers are engaged in a kind of playful labour; careful and unruly, inventive and repetitive in equal measure. As human figures and inanimate objects move together, their progress is at times aided, and other times hindered, by one another’s presence.
Until the Last of Our Labours Is Done explores the relation between human beings, objects and the natural world, the impossible endeavour at its heart revealed as a journey whose destination is always both unknown and apparently out of reach.
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Credits:
Until the Last of Our Labours Is Done
by Vlatka Horvat
Performers: Karen Christopher, Tim Etchells, Nicki Hobday, Vlatka Horvat, Greg Wohead
Cinematography and editing: Hugo Glendinning
Sound design: John Avery
Production: Alex Fernandes
© Vlatka Horvat 2021
A commissioned production of KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen, Hannover.
