Complicit

Vertical 4k video (2.160 x 3.840px, 19:6), colour/audio, 4’20”, 2022
HD video, colour/silent, 6’00”, 02020-02022
Pink light, custom bean bags, curtain
Installation views at Collectie De Groen (NL)

Complicit first emerged as a chapter in Mistakes. The artist talk (2020). It was reworked as a website (css3 animation, now defunct) and as a .gif animation. This is the healing room version. However, this room is not exactly a safe space.

Every self-help journey begins with the subject taking responsibility: acknowledging the problem and accepting their role in it. Only then can healing begin.

Complicit uses visual cues and auditory tropes of New Age meditation spaces to nudge the visitor towards accepting collective guilt for the ecological and climatological systemic crisis. The work is an attempt to address the global crisis as a shared mental block that must first be resolved in order to finally move on to tackling the issues at hand.

The installation is massively confusing, if not downright sardonic: a hard message wrapped in soft, pink light, comfortable seats and an irresistibly soothing soundtrack.