In Her Interior

Her Eyes Were As Black As Coal… is a new work by the Australian collective In Her Interior (IHI), comprised of Virginia Barratt and Francesca da Rimini. Originating from a “mother” script that the artists created through experimental constraint-based writing, this installation offers expanded ways to see, so that we may better comprehend the interdependencies of our existence and reflect on what is needed for us to collectively thrive. This mixed media installation features a two-channel video including shots of Australian landscapes juxtaposed with imagery of computer-modeled avatars called Terra, Spore, and Krill. Using IHI’s script, these characters speak to themes of geology and time travel, noting that “All of the human strata will be pressed to the thickness of a single epidermal sheet.” Co-creation is essential to IHI’s practice, not just between Barratt and da Rimini, but also between IHI and others connected ancestrally to the land and materials the artists use. This approach provides a rich basis for experimentation with form and methodology, embracing multiple creative modalities and perspectives, and creating an open system of doing-with-others that prioritizes support and survival. IHI believes this is the most appropriate way to pursue a creative life in times of precarity, and is concerned with cultivating creative practices that disrupt capitalism’s commodification of the artist. Her Eyes Were As Black As Coal… was created in collaboration with Ashley Haywood (alembic ceramicist) and Annie Wright (hat sculptor) and is supported by the ActNow Theatre’s MakeSpace.

Formed in 2015, In Her Interior co-creates and performs live works of spoken, sung, and recorded text and video within site-specific installation environments. As two of the four cofounders of cyber-feminist group VNS Matrix (est. 1991), da Rimini and Barratt have contributed to critiques of gender and technology for over three decades. In 2016, on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of VNS Matrix’s A Cyberfeminist Manifesto for the 21st Century, the group wrote and performed a new text, titled “A Tender Hex for the Anthropocene,” and curated a special section on affective labor for Runway magazine.

This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.