During a month’s stay at MoHA, Böhler & Orendt mainly conceived and elaborated a concept for a multichannel video installation titled “The Carrion Cheer”, allocated in a labyrinthian camp of ten interconnected tents, equally reminiscant of wigwams, geodesic dome buildings and refugee shelters. Ghosts of extinct animals, evoked by mist-screen-projections, are using those structures for their apparitions, in which they are intending to chantingly lure the visitors to follow them to their new outerworldly habitat. The installation will be realized at the Halsey Institute in Charleston, SC, in May 2018.
As a second project during their time in Austin, the duo staged a new episode of their ongoing series of installative performances called “Mehrung”. In this iteration, visitors where warmly invited to take part in a creative workshop, which turned out to be parareligious mess, celebrated to worship the divine greatness of exponential growth.
Generally speaking, Böhler & Orendt are sharing a fascination for the human aspiration to make sense of the world and to form it according to the various, ever changing world views that are emerging in this endless pursuit. As an artist duo, they are dealing with the often absurd and tragicomical political and ecological effects of these ambitions, making a crossover use of drawing, set design and modelmaking as well as sculpture, video and performative practices.
