M HKA Ensembles

Video, 02:45 min.

Collection: Courtesy Michael Snow.

Couple (2002) is an autonomous digital video-installation and, equally, a fragment from Snow's own feature-length film Corpus Callosum (2002), an experimental film best described as a sort of conceptual slapstick. Here, it was not so much the actors' performances as the many corny visual effects, the 'digital trickery,' that provided for a flamboyant spectacle of bizarre collages and visual gags. The actors compliantly submit to all sorts of effects, mainly borrowed from animation films: often they find themselves being stretched, squashed or completely deformed.

In Couple, we have a glaringly dressed duo, that simultaneously tries to get through the same toilet door, and manages to do so seamlessly. By way of a gradual metamorphosis (digital morphing), the two bodies melt into a geometric block whose dimensions perfectly fit the door's opening. This process of amalgamation and transformation is also underscored by the film title: the corpus callosum is the bridge between the brain's left and right hemispheres. A connection that makes its visual impact by way of an intimate fusion.