Engage and Control

Due to the process-based nature of the Session program, this project will undergo constant modifications; the features of this page provide accruing information on the project’s developments.

Lior Shvil will begin two months of work at Recess’s new outpost in Red Hook, Brooklyn as part of its signature program, Session. Shvil’s video project will launch Recess’s collaboration with Charlotte Kidd and Dustin Yellin from Kidd Yellin Studios.

During his premiere US solo presentation, Shvil will adapt the residency room at Kidd Yellin into a set and production studio for his installation and video piece, Benni – Engage and Control.

Shvil will stage and film a series of actions featuring two archetypes: the presenter/officer and the soldier/anti-terror specialist. Both characters will be played by the artist and serve as extensions of the architectural structure and psychology of the built physical environment.

The specificity of Shvil’s architecture, dialogue and costume will create a language exclusive to the production. The repetition of words, props and costume echo tropes of television, high fashion and combat rhetoric, generating an unsettling critique of the traditional dichotomies of good and evil, terror and security.

Bridging Tel Aviv and Red Hook, Red Hook and Soho, the artist will create a live feed of the work in progress that will appear on screen at Recess at 41 Grand Street in Manhattan.

Session invites artists to use Recess’s public platform to combine productive studio space with dynamic exhibition opportunities. Sessions remain open to the public from the first day of the artist’s project through the last, encouraging sustained dialogue between artists and audiences. Due to the process-based nature of Session, projects undergo constant revision and the above proposal is subject to change.