The project initially developed during a virtual residency with Agora Digital Art and Metaxa Studio, 2022. Shortlisted for the VR art prize 2023 awarded by DKB in cooperation with CAA Berlin. Currently available as 360 video with audio on Oculus Quest.
The speculative narrative evokes an alternate universe sometime in the future solely occupied by women and/or as women identifying that don’t belong to a particular race, place nor time and that are intricately connected with the ever-repeating tidal cycle of nature.
In this scene the Tidal Island Queens come together to build human towers and to generate the energy of the future. I was inspired by the death-defying Catalan tradition of human towers which are build upon trust and collaboration.
The 360 video weaves together CGI imagery inspired by the myth of Aphrodite’s violent birth; how the goddess of Love and Fertility was born a grown woman shaped form the white foam of the sea, and an audio piece that is a virtual continuation of Frigga Hauge’s “memory work” and built upon the written and oral reflections of middle-aged women how they feel in their body and mind.
Adding narrative from the “surreal artist Ithell Colquhoun with her vision of divine femininity, in which the woman becomes a landscape and merges with earth … In this metaphor, the project question’s themes related to mature women such as ageism, body confidence, and criticism of the eternal youthful representation of the female body. The clash between the two players: the body and the mind” (MiMi, Agora Digital Art).
During the VR experience visitors find themselves stranded on a remote tidal island when a gang of naked middle-aged female avatars with different body shapes descend from an ocean interspersed with blood. They are playful, jump, dance, and shake their crowns underlined by the sound of the ocean. When the playfulness ends, they squat, and the folds of their bellies resemble the folds of the rocks and become frozen in time.
Hereafter visitors float towards a cave system where they discover giant Venus sculptures and observe groups of amazons celebrating their rituals accompanied by a multi-layered soundscape woven with oral quotes of middle-aged women.
Idea, concept, cinematography, animation: Andrea G Artz
Sound Design: Isa Suarez
Thanks to the women who wrote or/and read the wonderful quotes! And to Veronica B. for the title idea and inspirational conversations.
