Humour in the Water Coolant — KUNSTVEREIN GARTENHAUS

Written by the artist and performed on the exhibition opening night, the play Humour in the Water Coolant is the story of a woman haunted by the appliances in her new home. Using the play as its starting point, the installation in the gallery lingers between domestic suburban interior and theatre set. The play’s title references the aqueous humour of the eye and mechanical fluids found in engines, revising the metaphor of a body as architecture to body as appliance.

Set during a séance to rid the home of its haunted aura, the play explores the panpsychic potential of domestic objects. The appliances, now able to speak, express their emotional lives, rife with dissatisfaction, sadness, and ultimately a desire to connect and love. The psychological effects of their declining usage and functionality antagonizes the idea of technological improvement as a positive development, reframing it as a means of escape. What does aging mean for these objects “born” on the assembly line, whose parts are easily replaced or whose obsolescence is already planned?

All images courtesy of the artist and Kunstverein Gartenhaus, Vienna
All photos: © kunst-dokumentation.com

Olivia Erlanger: Olivia Erlanger (b. 1990, New York, NY) lives and works in New York City. Recent solo exhibitions include Home is a Body at Soft Opening, London (2020); Split-level Paradise at Bel Ami, Los Angeles (2020); Ida at Motherculture, Los Angeles (2018); Poison Remedy Scapegoat (with Nikima Jagudajev) at Human Resources, Los Angeles (2018); and mouths filled with pollen at And Now, Dallas (2018). Recent group exhibitions include Shell at Del Vaz Projects, Los Angeles (2022), The Kick Inside at Museum X, Beijing (2022); Liquid Life at Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker (2021); Psychosomatic at Various Small Fires, Los Angeles (2021); In Situ at Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York (2021); Winterfest at Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2020); Haunted Haus at Swiss Institute, New York (2020); What do people do all day? at Kunsthalle Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2020); No Space, Just a Place at Daelim Museum, Seoul (2020); and For a dreamer of houses at Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas (2020). Erlanger and Luis Ortega Govela co-wrote Garage (MIT Press, 2018), a secret history of the attached garage as a space of creativity, from its invention by Frank Lloyd Wright to its use by start-ups and garage bands. The following year, Erlanger and Ortega Govela directed a feature-length documentary, also titled Garage, based on the publication, which screened at the ICA London, London, and at Kunsthalle Charlottenborg, on Dis.art (both 2019). Additionally, Erlanger recently screened a new documentary Portrait of d’ (2022) at Del Vaz Projects, Los Angeles (CA), and at Ennejma Ezzahara, Tunis (Tunisia). She is currently working on her first narrative film.

Humour in the Water Coolant, performance view, KV Gartenhaus, 2022

Oven as part of Humour in the Water Coolant, 2022

Sophie as part of Humour in the Water Coolant, 2022