Biohead Actualized, 2008, single channel digital video loop, duration: 10:00
About the work
In Biohead Actualized a digital ventriloquist doll regurgitates the language of contemporary self-help strategies, the actualisation movement (EST), psychotherapy and new age personality auditing. Engaging in an uneasy conversation with the audience, the doll answers very personal questions about its emotional state and continually gives unqualified advice. In the tradition of the ventriloquist show the Biohead offers a façade of humanness that transfers hidden agendas and speaks the unspeakable. Confused, wounded and neurotically manifested the biohead is a by-product and mouthpiece for a society infatuated with ‘the cult of the self’.
About the artists
Anna Davis
Born Sydney 1974
Lives & works Sydney
Jason Gee
Born Darwin 1965
Lives & works Sydney
Anna Davis and Jason Gee are media artists who have been working together for the past six years. Their collaborative, audiovisual practice uses sampling, video scratch techniques, projection and cut-up to agitate the media environment. Collecting and manipulating fragments from film, television, computer games and the Internet, they scavenge the debris of popular culture to create absurdist mashups and video collages exploring disturbing patterns and humour underlying the everyday. Various works from the artists’ Biohead series were exhibited recently in the group show Mirror States (2008) at the Campbelltown Arts Centre, as well as being screened at the Sydney Festival and The Museum of Contemporary Art’s Summer at Night sessions. Their video works also screen regularly at The Big Day Out music festival and many of Sydney’s underground electronic music events. The artists’ both have solo practices and have exhibited at venues including: The Art Galley of NSW, Fremantle Arts Centre, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, The ICC – Inter Communication Centre Japan, The Ujazdowski Centre for Contemporary Art Poland, and numerous media art festivals worldwide including: Electrofringe, VideoBrasil, Viper, Videochroniques, Videoforms and The Split Festival of New Film.
Exhibition catalogue