The house that shadows built

Overview

A 3-channel video installation consisting of spaces of worlding that allow for a reconfiguration of the real in a way that escapes commodification. Dismantling seemingly fixed identities, both of the subject and their background, the story weaves around Olga Petrova, an English silent film actress, who pretended to be an Eastern-European countess in order to gain fame in the American film industry of the 1910s. She set up her own film studio, which closed, like many others, when the major studios in Hollywood dominated the industry. The work looks at how copying, especially of the strategies of mass cinematic productions, can become a tool of emancipation and production of difference. Olga’s story is reimagined through a fictionalized tour of her studio, where the viewers are guided by a green screen.