27 OCT — 04 NOV 2023
Energy Drinks &
Bisexual Lighting
Artist Pairing
HOLON is proud to present Energy Drinks & Bisexual Lighting: A queered take on 90s LAN party culture by Berlin-based 3D artist Harriet Davey in collaboration with UK composer duo snake_case.
This newly commissioned installation for HOLON is a playful unraveling of gendered systems and spaces, both in physical and digital life. Davey’s mythical non-binary avatars host the visitors through virtual dimensions untouched by structural norms. They exist between spatial sound, gaming stations, soft furnishings, and of course, bisexual lighting: a neon pink and blue lighting device used in cinema, to empower bisexuality which is largely underrepresented on-screen. Davey evokes this scenographic phenomenon in their installation: to intervene the heteronormative aura of the gaming space. In doing so, they highlight the way in which RGB PC's in top gaming arenas accidentally lean into the blue and pink signifiers of bisexual lighting; more-so than the rest of the RGB spectrum. This is despite homophobic attitudes which often pervade the spaces.
In response, Energy Drinks & Bisexual Lighting is a portal into gamers’ delight. Through the re-appropriation of 90s LAN party culture and modern-day gaming aesthetics, the viewer is guided through a series of experiences. We invite you to step in and transcend the IRL space: to embody and explore the virtual characters, personas, and worlds of Harriet Davey. When dissolving into the glitched audio anomalies of snake_case, the immersive environment complicates the real and virtual, as well as the coded visual language that is inscribed onto bodies, and constructed in social forums. Spatialised sonic artifacts and imperfections co-conspire with the images to queer the immutable conventions of the gaming room into physical, sublime, kinetic objects.Who could you become in a virtual world? Navigate these realms and confront what it means to wear a digital skin.
*The artwork has since been featured at re:publica in May 2024 and Sónar Barcelona in June 2024.
Harriet Davey (EN/DE) is a 3D Artist and Art Director based in Berlin. Through the exploration of gender non-conforming virtual avatars, Davey restores and reclaims the bodies extorted by a male dominated gaming industry. Obsessed with questioning what it means to be fluid and human in a digital world: their work examines and interrogates the ugly and the beautiful; the maximum and the minimum; the online and the offline.
snake_case (EN) consists of Imogen Davey and Callum Murray, two accomplished performers, improvisers, and composers. They create work which explores the boundaries of human-machine interaction, with far-reaching implications for ideas of authorship and perception. Together they investigate the convergence of art, sound, and technology. They strive to redefine the notion of creativity in the digital age.