Communication
the buffalo institute for contemporary art (2021)
deli gallery (2021)
western front (2022)
2021
30 minutes
In her 30-minute video, Communication (2021), Lex Brown assumes multiple characters as parodic renderings of the telecommunications company Omnesia and New Greater Framingham, its next residential target for development. Aspen Van Der Baas (a gen-something girlboss), Jordie (her tech bro analyst), and Sylvie (an impassive and sentient AI), use their extensive technological powers to displace the consumer-citizens of New Greater Framingham.
Finding their strategies insufficient, they enlist the help of B. Marbels, a fast-talking, ambivalent film director who is tasked with creating “plotholes” to displace the citizens of New Greater Framingham. To Omnesia's chagrin, one such consumer-citizen, Marie, discovers the power of her inner voice to interfere with the algorithmic forces of Omnesia and its plotholes.
These characters, the argots that they speak, and the scenarios they play out are reminiscent of the speculative fictions of the present, but Brown’s video also questions the way that speculation (as capital) and fiction (as a constructed narrative) work. Communication suggests the many ways that we are drawn, cajoled, and coerced into ‘the future’, at the expense of what (and who) exists here and now.