Anna K.E.

Work:
Late Checkout I-IV, 2015-16. Video, color, sound. Courtesy the artists and Simone Subal Gallery, New York

Venue:
Kling & Bang

Work:
Late Checkout (Iceland Edition), 2017. Performance. Courtesy the artists and Simone Subal Gallery, New York

Venue:
Icelandair Hotel Marina, Saturday, October 7, 15:00

While they also maintain distinct independent practices, Anna K.E. and Florian Meisenberg’s collaborative projects explore the realms of digital intimacy: drawings pass between their phones and paintings shift from one artist’s hand to the other’s. Their resulting installations tend to constitute a literal and metaphorical platform for their creative dialogue. In these projects, screens, sculptures, paintings, drawings, prints, and textiles point to an evolving technological interdependency that opens up new universes of information and communication. Their works call attention to the seemingly limitless hall of mirrors that our screens generate, and the content that appears on them seems to be ever-reproducing in the timeless, space-less vacuum of our digital platforms.

The high-rise hotel room provides a similar non-space for K.E. and Meisenberg’s Late Checkout series (2015-ongoing). Each part in the series takes place in a different generically designed modern hotel room. The duo circumambulates these spaces, acting as observer and muse, and performing before screen-like windows that overlook cities buzzing silently below. In the films, Meisenberg manages a camera trained on K.E., the footage of which streams seamlessly on K.E.’s phone, which she vigilantly watches as she dances in a fluid combination of statuesque poses and quotidian gestures, often aligning her body with the architecture. Meisenberg and K.E. thus monitor themselves while adjusting and guiding each other—an attentive, psychological, and wireless process. Along with the presentation of the Late Checkout series at Kling and Bang Gallery, K.E. and Meisenberg will also perform Late Checkout (life performance II) (2017) at the Icelandair Hotel Marina, which will live-stream from one hotel room to another. While the artists are physically present with each other in the room, they are also watching themselves, and being watched by others. This process echoes the desires for immediate feedback, connectivity, visibility, and gratification that are integrated within the seemingly limitless feedback loops proliferating across our digital communication.