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.
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Press and media:
Mousse Magazine (link / pdf) – May 2023: Critical text accompanying Same River Twice: In the Nooks of Time and Space, in the Crannies of Language by Giovanna Manzotti. Italian and English versions available here.
artforum.com (pdf / link) – March 2022: Critic’s pick review of By Hand, on Foot at PEER by Jonah Goldman Kay.
Camera Austria (pdf) – March 2022: Review of By Hand, on Foot at PEER by Orit Gat.
Studio International (link) – Feb 2022: “Vlatka Horvat – Interview.” In conversation with Veronica Simpson.
recessed.space (link) – Feb 2022: “Vlatka Horvat’s collages landscapes.” In conversation with Will Jennings.
Evenings with WHW Akademija (link) – April 2022: Thinking Back to What You Said: a dialogue with the artist Tim Etchells.
They Haven’t Met Before… In conversation with the performance maker Silvia Costa (YouTube) – May 2020
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Contact me for a vimeo link if you’d like to view the video.
