Europa, Mon Amour

Lawrence Lek, Europa, Mon Amour (2016 Brexit Edition), real-time simulation and HD video loop. Courtesy: the artist and Open Source

'With the UK cast out of the EU, Dalston has degenerated into post-apocalyptic delirium. This is a drowned world of the near future, filled with the ruins of metropolitan life: forgotten nightclubs, DIY art installations, neon-lit music venues, Election booths, Turkish snooker clubs and luxury penthouses. Building upon Lek's project Dalston, Mon Amour, which was commissioned by Open Source Festival in 2015, this site-specific simulation brings together multiple histories of the area into a single zone. As the player roams around, fragments of European voices appear: samples from Alain Resnais’s Hiroshima, Mon Amour (1959) and Lars Von Trier's Europa (1991) speak about the nature of dislocation. It is a gradual but relentless meeting of past, present, and future that comes with any form of geopolitical transformation.'

Lawrence Lek is a graduate of the Cooper Union, the Architectural Association, and Trinity College, Cambridge. Currently based at the White Building in London, his work has been featured in recent exhibitions at Tramway, as part of Glasgow International 2016; KW Institut, Berlin, Germany; Cubitt Gallery, London; Wysing Arts Centre, Cambridge and the Delfina Foundation, London, amongst many others.  He is recipient of the Jerwood/FVU Awards 2016, the Tenderflix/Tenderpixel Artist Video Award and the 2015 Dazed Emerging Artist Award.