Rom 8 
Bergen 2018

READING PARTY AT WOMEN’S CORRECTIONAL FACILITY, WINNIPEG

Women in correctional facilities have often been subjected to menial tasks for little to no pay, such as binding bibles. Myclef Laun’s work investigates the psychological and even libidinal economy of this phenomenon. Working as a two-spirited artist, Myclef Laun’s work often considers tech-feminist responses to schematics and narrative experiences. In this installation and performance, Laun reinterprets Rachel Kushner’s  publication “Stanville” published in The New Yorker from tertiary un-American, non-male, and trans-human perspectives.

In “Reading party at Women’s Correctional Facility, Winnipeg”, Myclef Laun presents an installation and performance. Laun has wrapped the installation around columns supporting Rom 8 in an immersive installation comprising of: un- bound leather book covers, cricket bat, makeup kits, horse manure and drone. Setting up the staged exhibition topography, the work presents itself via the drone and the audience’s birds-eye view. While the drone remains dormant, the audience will take the role of Panoptes, the hundred eyed watchman of Greek mythology. The layout of materials charts a physical journey around the neutral support structures of the gallery offering a gateway from the relative familiarity and trifling of cosmetics, along an infinite pattern drawn out through the aroma of leather and manure.

The physical journey and aromatics of the installation work as primers activating minimum, medium and maximum security spheres within Laun’s physical performance. The installation’s secondary Panoptes will be awakened. Once alive, the drone’s quivering, humming and levitation will work as an oscillator freeing the schematic design of the installation.

Thanks to the Bergen Academy of the Arts, and the Canadian Council of the Arts