David Lawrey & Jaki Middleton, This isn’t happening, sculptural triptych, 2017. Video: the artists. 

This isn’t happening is a series of three automaton-based works, powered by hand-cranked vintage gramophone motors. Each work depicts a lone woman in a domestic space repeatedly struggling: to find something lost, to erase an error, to fall asleep.

By requiring the visitors’ engagement to activate the work, the artists’ obligate the viewer to assume an all-powerful, god-like complicity in the scene, whereby the viewer literally compels the woman’s repetitive action. The dreamlike scenes depicted in the works convey a universally recognizable feeling of anxiety and frustration; one that for the artists, is magnified by the current sociopolitical landscape.

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