Forces (with Marta Hryniuk), 2020 - Forces was developed through a period of correspondence between the artists, who wrote letters to each other as a way of imposing a formal constraint on their relationship as cohabiting partners.These letters combined the sharing of research and ideas for the film with personal reflections, circumnavigating ‘normal’ modes of being together, which had intensified during the pandemic. The film was shot outdoors in Rotterdam, with restrictive measures having been more relaxed in the Netherlands than in many countries. Hryniuk and Thomas filmed each other in various simple tableaus, in locations chosen for the conjunction of symbolic and material forces in the landscape. The work reflects on the acts of spending, sharing or wasting time, on dislocation from the world and on staking out a small patch of earth on which to lie down.
Supported by CBK Rotterdam and Gdańska Galeria Miejska.
Nordzee/North Sea (with Sophie Bates), 2020 - In Nordzee/North Sea, Nick Thomas and Sophie Bates take on the role of roving interviewers on an overnight ferry between the Netherlands and the UK. Passengers on the ferry muse on their journey, daily worries and the role of friendship in their lives, producing a snapshot of a temporary community created by their enforced proximity to one another. The use of the ‘talking heads’ format to create a portrait of a place takes inspiration from examples of interview-films made by Krzysztof Kieślowski, Pier Paulo Pasolini and Sharon Hayes.
An Entrance is an Exit Too (2018) - Shot entirely on a ferry in the North Sea, An Entrance is an Exit Too follows three characters as they go about their lives on a boat, with no clear destination. The piece uses Thomas Mann’s novel The Magic Mountain (in which Europe’s ailing bourgeoisie play out their lives in a Swiss sanatorium in the years preceding World War One) as a loose structuring device, with the boat standing in for the sanatorium.
Untitled (Teleprompters), 2019 - This piece puts the viewer in the position of the performer and relays a faltering speech about ambition and kindness. Developing material from a workshop held by the artist, the text is a synthesis of many voices, turning the transcript of the workshop into a layered monologue.
The video-sculptures are facsimiles of commercial teleprompters, which use semi-reflective acrylic to produce a scrolling text visible to a person positioned on-stage, but invisible to those off-stage. They are designed to give the illusion of natural oratory skill and the ability to memorise speeches. Untitled (Teleprompters) plays with these conventions, creating a disoriented notion of what might constitute on and off-stage.
Sometimes People Know How They Feel (2017) - This piece came out of a workshop held around archetypes and ideas of self-identication. The terms discussed are part of a feedback form widely distributed by arts institutions in the Netherlands, where visitors are asked to say which of a number of attributes, such as ‘feminine’, ‘resolute’ or ‘kind’ they associate with that institution. The piece asks questions around conformity, and the ways in which subjectivity is filtered through systems of categorisation.
