Freud’s House: The Double Mirror

Brass Art’s new work forms the second chapter of an ongoing project which allows them to enter the domestic spaces that selected authors occupied. Having previously explored the Brontë Parsonage, their most recent project sees Brass Art investigating the Freud Museum, London. The work has been commissioned by University of Salford’s Commission to Collect Programme and has been acquired by University of Salford for their collection.

During a period of residency, Brass Art inscribed themselves into the domestic space of Sigmund Freud’s former London home. Using Kinect laser-scanning to capture intimate-scaled performances throughout the rooms, staircase and hallway, the artists developed a visual response to the notion of the uncanny using strategies of repetition and simultaneous ‘doublings’. They remained open to the unconscious influences that determined their actions, behaviour and movements. During the sojourn in Freud’s house, ambient audio was captured simultaneously by electroacoustic composer Monty Adkins who recorded fleeting and involuntary aspects of the performances and coaxed sounds out of long-dormant objects.

The resulting work takes the form of a two-screen ‘double’ digital video installation. This pixelated and seemingly fragmented re-imagining of Freud’s house reveals exactly what is there and what is ‘unseen’; the Kinect footage appears to bisect walls and reveal the obverse of the scene. Measuring the space through their bodily presence and a virtual ‘peeling back’ of the architectural layers, Brass Art create a dynamic exploration of the domestic interior as a site of creativity. Experienced binaurally, the soundscape evokes the intimacy of being in the space itself. This temporal interplay and its creative potential lie at the heart of Brass Art’s exploration of Freud’s House.

This work was exhibited at Festival of the Unconscious: The Unconscious Revisited at the Freud Museum (24/6/2015-4/10/2015) and The International 3, Salford (17/9/2015-30/10/2015)