Hannah McNulty Madden & Lauren Wilson

Hannah McNulty Madden & Lauren Wilson

As a collaborative practice, we look at internet themes as internet women. We try to interpret the ever-changing trends of the internet and understand it both digitally and physically. Medium translation is one of the main focuses of our practice. We take ideas and concepts from the digital sphere and bring them into real life, like a Telenovela.

Our approach to responding to the world can be taken as absurd perhaps, but how absurd is it really when compared to the times we are in. The internet has changed the way people now “find themselves”, between buzzfeed and astrology, the internet is an overflowing cup of personality trends to drink from. The act of finding yourself has been transformed into nearly a completely digital experience and we use craft, textile and mediums of what we consider to be completely opposite to digital to try and understand what “finding yourself” really means.

Julia Leads the Blind -

Our work plays with the humorous aspect of identity, the “finding yourself” that the internet enables us to indulge in. From BuzzFeed quizzes to daily horoscopes, we seem to be in an age of using hypothetical cheeses to find out who we really are. Each of the answers received from the quizzes that we answer mindlessly, yet simultaneously consider carefully, brings us one step closer to understanding ourselves and unlocking the true meaning of our existence. We exist in a time where we feel the need to add more substance to ourselves, perhaps indicative of a mysterious, unspoken emptiness; therefore we feel obliged to do things such as investigate our birth dates, and demand that it tell us something profound about ourselves, if we are here for a grander purpose, something to make us special. “The internet owes me these answers, it needs to tell me I’m pretty or I’m retaking the quiz, it needs to tell me the answer that I want!” you say to yourself as you furiously select “potato in MASH form” as your definitive answer. That wonderful feeling of relief when you choose your all-timefavourite apostle, and it resonates with your preferred sex position - Buzzfeed confirming its now undisputed legitimacy. What makes us believe that the method we used to decide things reveals a deeper truth about our inner psyche which we have been hiding from ourselves? Are we not aware, possibly hyper-aware, of who we are? Why does there always have to be more? And does it really matter?

Julia Leads the Blind performance - 2019

Many of us are guilty of reading about our star sign and looking at what personality traits we should or should not possess. Being a Taurus gives you an excuse to be stubborn. Oh, you’re a Pisces? You really are selfless. Do the stars really determine our personalities? Or is this a weak template for how you/we are supposed to be? Does having an undying love for Toto’s Africa make you more interesting, giving you that edge that the rest of us are lacking? “This is MY song, this is my SONG”, a distant cry of someone latching on to a thing, more importantly, their thing , making them whole once more. This piece is trying to give the feeling of searching for hidden meaning within yourself a physicality, through a somewhat anthropomorphic and lighthearted approach, and explore how the experience of interacting with vapid self-discovery in the real world differs to doing so in the intangible internet realm. What will you find out about yourself today? Does the fact that the experience is physical make it seem more real, more genuine? Will it reveal the real truth, the answers you have been scouring the internet, the night sky, and Buzzfeed for? Riddle us this, what exactly are you hoping to find?

Do The Asterisks Gaze Back Performance — May 2019

”I think there’s a lot to be learned from childish behaviour. Examining the world we live in in a playful way - true giddiness is when I feel like I’m doing something right, which feels ghostly, interlinked with the interest I have in some aspects of the female experience - the fluctuating oddities involved, particularly apparent in the betwixt and between periods of my woman-ness. I often employ a mix of moving image, textiles, and performance; building characters, creatures and narratives that help me humorously explore these strange waters.”

— Lauren Wilson

Hannah McNulty Madden

I am a writer by trade but a performer by night. Currently, I am struggling with combining my writing and my art, unable to see them as one. I won’t force them to merge, I’ll say that now. But I am interested in why I struggle to even let them meet. But not meet in the kiss way. But maybe the kiss way could happen too.

I am invested in not only myself and who I am, but also you and who you are. I’m interested in people being interested in themselves, in the space where we are the same. I use theatrics to convey how far we can indulge ourselves in our identities and how we live. I play with what makes us uncomfortable in relation to what we know to be true.

Waiting Room

Morning Routine

Morning routine-

Some things are both very public and very private. Public and performative, intimate and sensual, the mouth can’t be deemed as one or the other. I’m interested in how it can be both and what it looks like to make a private experience public. This is like teeth brushing XXL. Waiting room-

Some of us all have very similar shared experiences. The dentist, for example, is a very specific situation with very distinctive sensory memories related to it. Not very pleasant, really, when you think about it. The smell of the gloves in your mouth, the sound of metal against bone, scraping the plaque. It would be terrible if someone were to recreate those feelings, wouldn’t it?

Lauren Wilson

Teenage Diary

Still from Välillä/Idir – 2019

Teenage Diary is part of an anthropological study of pubescent females using excerpts from a diary I kept as an angsty and famehungry adolescent. Using a critical and academic approach, I explore the bizarre inner workings of the former Self, cautiously introducing her to the judgemental new Self. Välillä/Idir is a video piece involving multiple projections examining belief in, and cynicism around, ghost stories. Footage can be found on Vimeo.

Truth HZ is an interactive installation I made in collaboration with a sound engineer, Tony Sikström. An antique chair was rigged with subwoofers, and I invited participants into a constructed oneseater restaurant to choose from a menu of various frequencies, most notably the delicious 18.98 Hz, which has become known as the Ghost Frequency. The critics left uncomfortable reviews, which became a significant part of my work.