French & Mottershead

Work for Live Art Denmark
2014 “Afterlife” at Hitparaden 2.

Afterlife
UK-based artists Rebecca French and Andrew Mottershead presented Afterlife at Hitparaden 2. The immersive performance was part of a series of works reflecting on the death of the body and its relationship to place and time. Lying on a towel on a wooden deck, each audience member equipped with a mp3 player, the work consisted of an audio narrative that invited listeners on a poetic journey beyond their own death, and through the natural processes of decomposition in a woodland setting, compressing decades into minutes. The development of the work was supported by Cifas, Brussels.

About the Artists
French & Mottershead are the UK artist duo Rebecca French and Andrew Mottershead. Spanning performance, video, photography, sound and digital installation, their work makes use of detailed social and forensic research to expand the viewer’s relationship to site. Often working with experts as part of their process, they undertake rigorous investigations into the ways environments, architectures and public spaces connect with who we are, and define a particular context to examine the codes and conventions that underpin the flows of feeling within.

French & Mottershead have created works for galleries, museums, libraries, shops, forests, on boats, online, public footpaths, and in domestic spaces to intervene viscerally on the patterns, routines and images of daily life. Their work has been described as “poetic, playful and subtly subversive” always leaving open the possibility of radically altering the viewer’s perception of their place in the world.

More about the duo and their work can be found on their website.