Theodora or The Progress

Theodora or The Progress is a collective artistic project that includes newly produced installations, sculptures, music works, performances by a group of international artists including Hugo Canoilas, Cee Füllemann, Tarren Johnson, Elise Lammer, Alizee Lennox, Sarah Margnetti, Julie Monot, Lucien Monot, Florence Peake, Jessy Razafimandimby, Mia Sanchez, Eve Stainton and Niels Trannois. Filmed in 16mm, and co-produced by art institutions Europe-wide, the film addresses the notion of empowerment, while exploring the potential of the subconscious. Drawing from a large spectrum of references ranging from Virginia Woolf, Adrian Piper, Lisa Simpson, Deleuze and Guattari, but also Snoop Dogg and Franz Kafka, the film emphasises the ability of non-verbal communication as means to produce strategies against different types of discrimination. Borrowing the name of what was possibly the first feminist figure, the empress Theodora (500 AD), Theodora or The Progress portrays the metamorphosis of the narrator and several of their accomplices into a pack of dogs. Theodora or The Progress stages a collective takeover that speaks of love, transformation and transcendence.

The screening relates to the exhibition Hugo Canoilas. On the extremes of good and evil  (December 8, 2020 – June 20, 2021 in mumok). There Canoilas' floor painting worked also as a stage for a performance developed by Elise Lammer and Julie Monot, titled BECOMING DOG, wherein performers were dressed as dogs and explored new potentials for empathy within an institutional space.

Theodora or The Progress
28’18’’ single-channel video, 16 mm transferred to digital, 2021–2022
By Alpina Huus, with Hugo Canoilas, Cee Füllemann, Tarren Johnson, Elise Lammer, Alizee Lenox, Sarah Margnetti, Julie Monot, Lucien Monot, Florence Peake, Jessy Razafimandimby, Mia Sanchez, Eve Stainton, Niels Trannois

After the screening there is an artist talk with Hugo Canoilas, Elise Lammer, Lucien Monot and Rainer Fuchs

Tuesday, June 14, 2022, 7 pm