The videos and performances of Anouchka Oler can be understood as desperate attempts to affect and understand the Other- and thus the entity of the world. At once magic show, stand-up comedy routine and experimental philosophy, Oler’s joyous practice consists in composing a community of interdependent beings in where most seem to be going through some sort of perpetual existential crisis. The participants are invited to take part in speculative narratives where they are brought to discuss topics such as affects, collective living, experimental ways of life, material environment and their interactions. Humans, sculptures and objects are given the opportunity to examine these topics both on the surface and in depth. Each sculpture is conceived and crafted as a character with voice, a specific mood and standpoint. Those characteristics in combination with the materiality of the sculpture will participate in the resolution of the plot by producing hypothetical and at times far-from-reality, albeit satisfying outcomes.

Bent on knowing how they were made, and what and who they are made of, the actors raise the issue of how power circulates in the everyday course of things, the space it constructs, and the implications for the construction of the self. Both worried and amused, these investigators initiate a jubilant and burlesque heuristic quest. Metaphysical subjects and ‘big questions’ about love, anxiety, ways of living, relationships, and power dynamics are developed through porous research lived through the body and theatrics.

Born in Saint Malo in 1988, Anouchka Oler grew up in a succession of houses under construction. She now lives and works in Brussels where she co-founded and runs feeelings with camille gérenton, an artist-run space working with economic and affective concerns. She has shown her work in exhibitions, collective events and residencies with Galerie (INT), Triangle France (Marseille, FR) Entreprise Projects (Athens, GR), La Ferme du Buisson (Noisiel, FR), frac île-de-france – le plateau (Paris, FR), Cooper Gallery (Dundee, UK), MOTINTERNATIONAL (Brussels, BE), De Appel (Amsterdam) and at Setu (Elliant).