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PLASTIQUE FANTASTIQUE

PLASTIQUE FANTASTIQUE

Friends (2019)

Our practice is a collective enunciation, even when there is only one (we are always the group).

- PLASTIQUE FANTASTIQUE Tweet

MASKED PUJA FOR MEME-TECH ANIMALS

Horniman Museum and Gardens, London (2019)

Plastique Fantastique is the name of the “performance fiction” produced by a London-based collective that has a core group consisting of David Burrows, Alex Marzeta, Vanessa Page and Simon O’Sullivan. The four artists work with others to produce exhibitions and events that frequently involve projections and music; their current and past collaborators include Mark Jackson, Benedict Drew, Frankie Roberts, Ana Benlloch, Motsonian, Harriet Skully, Stuart Tait, Tom Clark, Simon Davenport, Joe Murray, Lawrence Leaman, Samudradaka and Aryapala.

The group are known for presenting performances and installations that combine baroque, science-fiction and folk aesthetics and reference popular culture, memes, politics and philosophy.

Increasingly, Plastique Fantastique has addressed the relations of humans, animals and technology and organic and synthetic intelligences. Stephanie Moran, commenting on the group’s recent work, has identified Plastique Fantastique with “eco-sci-fi art” that “explicitly questions the category ‘human’ by depicting possible ecological futures” (Vector: Journal of the British Science-Fiction Association, 2020).
Plastique Fantastique fictions and communiques are presented by avatars from the near and extreme past and future. These avatars and the stories they tell are often conceived through collaborative musical improvisation and developed as multi-media performances, comics, texts, diagrams, installations, shrines, assemblages and, most recently, a custom-made deck of divination cards similar to tarot.

The group assemble and combine disparate images, sounds and ideas to channel fictions, with avatars, ideas and objects accruing meaning as they appear, over time, in the group’s performances or exhibitions. In the words of Plastique Fantastique avatar Feveractal, this process allows collaborators, “to surrender your ego – to produce something that is not of you – to circumnavigate your personal judgement and fear of being judged.”

ZOOM RITUALS

PLASTIQUE FANTASTIQUE
AND
REACTOR

PERFORMANCE
PREDICTION

TRAITOR MEME

Installation and performance in Shonky
at the DCA, Dundee (2017)
Photo by Erika Stevenson

This collaborative process can be understood as relating to fictioning, a concept concerning experimental practices mapped out in the book Fictioning: The Myth-Functions of Contemporary Art and Philosophy (2019) by members of the core group, David Burrows and Simon O’Sullivan.

Plastique Fantastique works have been described as revealing “anxieties of the self and the state as shaped by capitalism” (Daisy Lafarge, ArtReview, 2018) and offering ways to survive in present time.

The group’s work has also been described by writer and curator Tim Dixon as “performances and installations that overwhelm, overfeed and overstimulate in their onslaught of sound, word and imagery. They combine theoretical writing with folk references, echoes of ritual practices and nods to historical countercultural figures” (Art Monthly, 2017).

SUMMONING THE BITCOIN FAIRY

Neon Festival, Newcastle (2017)

SUMMONING THE BITCOIN FAIRY

Neon Festival, Newcastle (2017)

The 2019 exhibition Mars Year Zero at Southwark Park Galleries is one such example of an immersive Plastique Fantastique exhibition which brought together many of the group’s collaborators as previously performed avatars.

Other recent exhibitions include Plastique Fantastique Zer0-City (2019) at IMT and the Hayward Touring show Shonky: The Aesthetics of Awkwardness (2017-2018) curated by John Walter, at the MAC, Belfast, DCA, Dundee and Bury Art Museum and Sculpture Centre.
They have also exhibited and performed at venues including the ICA, Res., the Royal Academy, Matts Gallery, Space Station 65, Tate Britain, ASC Gallery, the Horniman Gallery, SPACE, Auto Italia, The Showroom and Lewisham Art House London; Outpost gallery, Norwich; Fabrica Gallery, Brighton; Primary, Nottingham; Aspex Gallery, Portsmouth; Castlefield, Manchester; Gallery North, Newcastle; Peacock Visual Arts, Aberdeen; Jupiter Artland, the Embassy Gallery, Rhubaba Gallery and the Collective Gallery, Edinburgh; Arkeshus Kunstsenter, Norway, and Stroom den Haag, Netherlands; GiG Gallery, Munich; Aliceday Gallery, Brussels, Publics, Helsinki; and the Pratt Manhattan Gallery, New York, as well as in NEoN, Dundee; the Tatton Biennale, TULCA, Galway, the Curbitt Festival, Geneva, and the Supernormal festival, Oxfordshire.

MASKED PUJA FOR MEME-TECH ANIMALS

Horniman Museum and Gardens, London (2019)

Our practice affirms transformation: we are concerned less with mundane consciousness than with cosmic consciousness.

- PLASTIQUE FANTASTIQUE Tweet
FICTIONING: THE MYTH-FUNCTIONS OF CONTEMPORARY ART AND PHILOSOPHY

By David Burrows and Simon O’Sullivan, published by
Edinburgh University Press (2019)

In it, they explore fictioning in art as an open-ended, experimental practice that involves performing, diagramming or assembling to create or anticipate new modes of existence. Learn more

ZER0-CITY

IMT Gallery, London (2019)
Photo by Kelley Alexandra

Zer0-City was Plastique Fantastique’s 2019 solo exhibition at IMT Gallery. The show was a mixed-media installation with films and large tarot cards, depicting Plastique Fantastique avatars. The exhibition presented the story of meme-tech-animals ruled by the multiple circuits of the Mayan Calendar. It was influenced by Edwin Abbott Abbott’s satirical novella Flatland (1884), as well as magical and folk practices, evolution and meme theory, the history of cybernetics and reflections upon everyday, digital and physical encounters in the city of London.

Zer0-City was introduced by the ‘Invitation Contract for Zer0-City’ and opened with the performance Welcome to Zer0-City for which Plastique Fantastique were David Burrows, Alex Marzeta, Vanessa Page, Benedict Drew, Mark Jackson and Motsonian.
Mars Year Zero was Plastique Fantastique’s 2019 exhibition at Southwark Park Gallery, which responded to Elon Musk’s SpaceX programme and ambitions to colonise Mars, Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles, (1950) and Donna Harraway’s Staying with the Trouble (2016). The exhibition told the story of the colonisation of Mars by tech-animals through an installation that included a ribbon rocket, a film, performances and a comic. The exhibition was launched by the performance The Seed Archive Breakout and the Burning of Elon Musk (Mars Year Zero) for which Plastique Fantastique was David Burrows, Alex Marzeta, Vanessa Page, Simon O’Sullivan, Benedict Drew, Mark Jackson, Anna Benlloch, Sid Smith and Charlotte Hurst.

It culminated in the performance event Friends Rendezvous (The First Days of Mars Year Zero), a night of invited performances with Benedict Drew, Gentle Stranger, Reactor, Tim Spooner and Underwater River, as well as David Burrows, Alex Marzeta, Vanessa Page, Benedict Drew and Frankie Roberts as Plastique Fantastique. The night ended with a performance of And Then What? by Shaky Dome.
Plastique Fantastique, First Days of Mars Year Zero, 2020 1
Plastique Fantastique, First Days of Mars Year Zero, 2020 2
Plastique Fantastique, First Days of Mars Year Zero, 2020 3
Plastique Fantastique, First Days of Mars Year Zero, 2020 4 TP WEB
FIRST DAYS OF MARS YEAR ZER0 (2018)

4 Digital prints on double weight
matt inkjet paper
Each 90 x 91 cm (35.4 x 35.8 inch)
Unique

ALL THE FANTASIES
OF THE PEOPLE

Plastique Fantastique’s performances often evolve between events and venues. Their 2013 performance All the Fantasies of the People took place at Grand Union, Birmingham, and Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridgeshire, and IMT Gallery. The IMT version of the performance – staged to coincide with the exhibition YOUR EXTINCTION OUR FUTURE!

For this performance Plastique Fantastique were David Burrows, Simon O’Sullivan, Ana Benlloch, Mark Jackson, Tom Clark, Alex Marzeta, Venessa Page and Stuart Tait; John Cussans joining the group for the Wysing performance. The performance involved a collaborative text.

This is one of four multimedia performances of ‘Plastique Fantastique: All the fantasies of the people!’. This version was performed and recorded at IMT Gallery, London, on the 27th of June 2003 at the preview of the exhibition Plastique Fantastique Communique: YOUR EXTINCTION OUR FUTURE!, which ran from the 28th of June to the 28th of July 2013.
The phrase, “All the fantasies of the people!”, comes directly from ‘Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti’ (1954) by Maya Deren. Inspired by Deren’s film and the rituals depicted therein, the work acts as a type of carnival in which avatars are described and appear, devised by the individuals taking part. It is part of Plastique Fantastique’s interest in the practice of fictioning, a collaborative practice of creating, combining and sharing myths, in part derived from the “MYTH-SCIENCE” of Sun Ra. This version of the work is the second performance of four, following a previous version at the Stephen Lawrence Gallery, Birmingham, for ‘Magic Eye Music Festival’, (20th July 2013) and at the Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge, for Space-Time: Convention T (31st August 2013). For ‘All the fantasies of the people!’ Plastique Fantastique were: David Burrows, Simon O’Sullivan, Ana Benlloch, Mark Jackson, Tom Clark, Alex Marzeta, Vanessa Page and Stuart Tait. For the Stephen Lawrence Gallery Plastique Fantastique also included Will Saunders, and for the final performance at Wysing they were joined by John Cussans.