4 Experiential Artists Who Brightened Up 2016 | The Wrap-Up
Liz West, Nonotak, Moment Factory, and Jeremy Couillard promised us magical experiences this year, and didn’t disappoint.
By Noémie Jennifer
December 27, 2016, 2:15pm
The winter solstice is behind us, the days are getting longer, and the calendar year is coming to an end, which can only mean one thing: It’s time to check back with some of the experiential artists we hailed as up-and-comers last winter, and see what they’ve been up to the last few months. Liz West has been painting rainbows all over England. NONOTAK Studio spent their year on the road, playing with light, mirrors and motion. Moment Factory is melding the real and the virtual, sprinkling their magic outdoors. And Jeremy Couillard is figuring out how to make computers weird again. Catch up with them all, below.
Jeremy Couillard
Moving away from the screen and into the real world is one answer, but Jeremy Couillard refuses to give up on pixels. “I love computers, but they have really helped bring us to a dark place this year. I want to make super fucked up bizarre-o cosmologies that can remind me we’re still weird and complicated humans, and not just data points to sell toothpaste and work pants and ideology to,” he shares in an email. Couillard has been working all year on a video game called Alien Afterlife, which, appropriately enough, sounds like a metaphor for the struggle to effect change. The premise: “You die, go into the afterlife, and alien terrorists invade, stealing the machine that was going to reincarnate you. You have to go explore the alien occupied bardo to get the pieces back with the hope of being reborn.” A VR video of the game’s intro will be released by the New Museum next month, and the game will be part of a show at yours mine & ours gallery in February.