Ambiguus from Simon Mullan on Vimeo.

Video / 02:05min / HD

Camera : Julian Mullan

Sound: Theodore Trottner, Simon Mullan

Performance at “Platform Stockholm”

Curated by Roger von Reybekiel

Music by Julian Hruza, Boris Fiala, Simon Mullan

Stockholm, 2011.

Intermorior / Singel Channel Video ( screening edition ) / HD / 2011.

The latest video piece by Simon Mullan was shot and produced in Stockholm in May this year with one of the last remaining knife throwers worldwide. The artist becomes the focus and he is also the target.

Here a confrontational encounter is witnessed between the performance artist and the knife throwers. Mullan choses to be subjected to an old ritualistic fairground act.

Central to the piece is the two man facing each other  in their roles and respective professions. The performance is punctuated by the rhythm of the knives piercing into the turn table also known as the “wheel of death”.

The artist is deliberately encountering a feeling of mortality, total helplessness and compliance while there is an anticipation felt from him as well as the viewer. Curiosity and arousal of the ten knives being thrown ceremoniously and intermittently at the artist transport the viewer into the artists place. With the fortuitous outcome a sense of relief is felt at the end of the performance.

Simon Mullan is searching in all his work for the point of no return. He is also addressing the questions of masculinity, machoism, innate fear and pathos.

The notion of drama is elementary.

M, Eine Hymne an die Kraft / Performance at Alida Ivanov Gallery / Stockholm, Sweden 2010.

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The infinite spin stays in the moment, turns around the centre of your body, breaths the purest source of energy.
The never ending moment of simplicity for a hero in his own room, mirrored by nothing but the black slick metal of his beauty, Weightless in muscles.
He dances the gay aesthetics and macho behaviours, the line gets thinner, the pole is the gateway to gravity, the centre of an universe.
Dance into yourself, away from cultural heaviness.
Antiboredome moves.
Text: Hedda Viå
Starring Wiktor Sjövall.
Thanks to : Julian Hruza ( Live Music ), Maximilian Schröder ( Studio Music Prod.) and the Austrian Embassy in Stockholm Sweden.

Mensch, Maschine, Umwelt, / Single Channel Video Installation / MiniDV / 2008.

Off the beaten tracks: Björn Segschneider + Simon Mullan

A classic collage with hidden depths.
At the heart of “off the beaten trackz” is the composition of a fractured record by visual means.
The fracture or crack is transposed into a new, or to be precise, into a reawaked medium,
in accordance with the Dadaist tradition: in this case, into the vinyl record.
The mix, a classic medium, becomes a defence against a conformist music industry,
the apparently beautiful surface of the records, itself a collage, contains a wild montage,
although conscious awareness was not entirely forfeited in its making, given that “consciously chosen juxtapositions”
also had a part to play.
The Dadaist gesture, the purely visual formation is thus internally fractured, connected to a conceptual problem,
with the intention of driving consciously towards difference. The fact that the record itself remains functionally
viable means that it is an object committed to everyday use. In the same way that “Karawane” by Hugo Ball,
next to Kurt Schwitters “Primal Sonata” the best known example of Dadaist sound poetry, remains a poem or more precisely becomes a poem.
The work of deconstruction creates something new. But this is only one aim, surprise, shock;
the other aim consists in the conscious creation of relationships, similarities, juxtapositions and differences.

Michael Hammerschmid. 2008.

Future Cinema / 00:54:09 sec / Singel Channel Video Installation / 2008.

The true fiction phone call.

To have some one to call. To know what to say and know how to listen, to smile in silence, To see a world in a grain of sand. To smoke without cigarettes.

The fantasy is in front of you. Andreas makes it so real that it becomes my reality too. Before seeing ´Fiction Phone Call´ I knew the story, I even knew the name of the video, still I was wondering about this guy’s yellow Ferrari. I wasn’t fooled, I like other viewers are captured and taken into the world of Sophie and Yellow Ferraris. There is no way of getting out, of escaping the real artist, the natural born actor’s invention. He invents and we just have to follow. He is the creator of a time and a certain happening, of a Birthday party and a very special guest.

Are we even invited, do we dare to ask him? The fiction phone call talker, by the true speaker is not too humble and doesn’t have to ask the audience for permission. He knows you’re going to follow him, directly to the heart of his appearance and imagination. It’s his party and he invites whoever he wants and the one person for him right now is Sophie. So maybe we shouldn’t even bother, to break into a world that is his creation. Yes it’s a game, but he is the leader and would never accept anything to interfere with the show. The show of dreaming.

And to hear her voice. Planning when to take a ride with the yellow car. To wait for her answer. Sophie? Are you coming? What car, Sophie?

Sophie is untouchable for us, because it’s only through his ears and lips that we are able to see her. He is the medium keeping her in safe distance for anyone who wouldn’t understand how to be a part of it.

Can we be a part of Andreas imagination? Can dreams be shared and understood?

The fiction phone call and the completely true moment, that the people in the car are sharing, just by following and listen to Andreas, reveals the stable grounds of dreaming. Fantasy is not a transparent mist of purple and white clouds, it’s made of words and views, smiles and secrets and can be shown when confronting the real Actor.

Th actor and the creator, in the centre of making dreams. In a car. In the supermarket. In the woods. In the hospital. The gift to escape by your own, with your own hands, is the short cut to happiness. To be rich without money, to drive without a car and to be in love, just because Sophie do exist for a moment. To hold you destiny in the palm of your hands.

To let the actor lead the game is easy because its just for us to follow, we don’t need to come up with ideas or doubts because the story teller is so much more than a story teller, he is an illusionist and the master of his own world. A world that with a great speed is clashing into mine. I can’t escape the facts, the real facts of imagination.

And the actor is a charming man. He flirts, totally aware of being recorded, he is the subject of game, he knows it all, but the viewer might find him lost in dreams. Well, it appears he’s lost. But he is there, more present than anyone. And its because he’s present in the moment that gives him the ability to create a parallel moment, a more beautiful one. A moment of his own, with Sophie and the yellow Ferrari.

Andreas off course doesn’t like to go to the cinema, to watch films. To passively see someone else’s imagination. His aim is not to see fiction, he wants to realise it, be a part of it and feel it with his own hands, to be the centre of universe. Nothing more nothing less. The wish we all share? But few dares to show. Clown, actor, director, star? No matter what, or, all of it! As long as you believe.

But it’s not only about making dreams of his own. If someone is ill  Andreas plays the doctor and orders helicopters to pick up the person, all by some simple phone calls. Intuition comes from the heart and he knows what is needed to bring up a smile, even though he never shows that he is aware of what he’s doing. And that’s what make me trust him.

one who interprets

Curtain!

Applause.

Text by Hedda Viå

Blinder Passagier / Singel Channel Video / 05:16 min. / MiniDV / 2007

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