OPHELIA
Nadja Verena Marcin

Franklin Furnace Grant

From the press release
Nadja Verena Marcin’s OPHELIA will be an architectural performance both presented live and as video sculpture evoking questions of anthropocentric attitudes and actions that are resulting in human destruction of the biosphere. The artist will be reenacting Ophelia’s final moments inside a saltwater water tank—wearing an Ophelia-like dress, and a transparent breathing mask, the artist will appear dreamlike but deprived, attempting to quote text from Daniil Kharms’ The Werld about human subjective perception. The final video-sculpture, an aquarium-like transparent sarcophagus, with video screens on its longer sides, will display footage of the live performance. The iconic artwork and text that have inspired and will inform this performance includes Ophelia (Millais, 1852) and Three Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Koons, 1985) and text from The Werld (Kharms, 1939).The image of Ophelia inside an advanced, constructed reality, kept alive through a mask and encircled by technology, will be a metaphor for the Anthropocene: “The human imprint on the planet has now become so large that it rivals some of the great forces of nature.”

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