May The Fox Take You

May The Fox Take You is guided by a text assembled from idioms, curses and blessings loosely translated from a language that is almost extinct. The moving image work travels through a field of mustard, within the cavities and digestive fluids of carnivorous plants, to a moth that looks like twin snakes nodding in the wind. A robot dog is being kicked, a dancer is rehearsing a choreography taken from a pogo dance tutorial. The soundscape is composed of recorded drum beats which are electronically rearranged, overlaid with strings formed by machine learning models. 

As filmmakers, Cohen and Van Balen work through intuition, creating a narrative-free work-of-art. The film follows seemingly unrelated scenes, cut with dissonant text and a unique energy: one that the imagery and texts contradicts itself as it confronts that mourning with violence. The confrontation of loss lingers throughout, something that has become universal in this post-pandemic life, as the residue of the collective trauma felt by loss of time, climate grief and anxiety persists.

Caitlin Quinlan unpacks the tensions in Revital & Tuur’s moving image work: life and death, loss and heartbreak, as well as the systemic violence of industrial and political processes.

The London-based artist duo work across objects, installation and film. They were the recipients of the CCI x SHS Experimental Technology Fellowship 2023, offering a unique development and commission opportunity for an artist looking to incorporate new technology within their work.