Art Collaboration in Motion

This avant-garde video art is a collaboration between myself and multidisciplinary artist Marianna Magurudumian-O’Reilly, whose work spans textile art, mask-making, costume design, performance, video and sound experiments, painting and drawing. After I experienced Marianna and Daniel’s live performance at Studio Grotesque in 2024 (Marianna’s multimedia solo exhibition at Museu de l’Ebre, Tortosa, Spain), I saw potential to build upon her vibrant work by introducing my video expertise and capturing Marianna’s live performance within an everyday urban setting. The result? A playful contrast between the surreal and the mundane – coming out of the metro, strolling through El Carmel, sipping on a (rather trippy) imaginary coffee, reflecting and disappearing back underground.

Title: Incantation for El Carmel
Size: HD (1920 x 1080 pixels)
Duration: 2 mins 57 seconds
Please contact me for terms and permission to use this video in your project.

A Tribute to 100 Years of Surrealism

Marianna originally created the ceremonial cloak and masks for Incantation for Dead Avant-Gardes, an audio-visual performance piece commissioned for the Centennial of Surrealism celebrations in April 2024 at Maison André Breton in France. To honour the 100th anniversary of the Surrealist Manifesto, symbols were hand-painted directly onto a white hessian cloak. Daniel O’Reilly’s haunting soundtrack, alongside Egyptian poetry recited by Surrealist friends in Cairo-played as Marianna channeled these sounds into visual forms, echoing Surrealist techniques of liberating the subconscious and transforming into imagery in real time.

Filming on Home Turf

We shot the video right outside my front door in Barcelona. Of course, filming on the busy streets meant bumping into curious neighbours – and trying to explain our project in Spanish! These days, a simple, “Es para TikTok” (even if it’s not) usually does the trick.

Visual Play: Organic Meets Geometric

What drew me most to this project was the idea of taking close ups of Marianna’s intricate masks, the organic flow of her white hessian cloak and how beautifully it would contrast against the clean, geometric forms of the city, which I then accentuated through kaleidoscopic effects. The intuitively painted graphic symbols across the cloak – bold, clean and instantly recognisable even from a distance – added extra layers of meaning. I especially love the little painted coffee pot, a perfect nod to her “coffee break” moment. Shooting on escalators gave us graceful movement and striking linear compositions. I used my VJ and video editing software effects to weave the scenes together seamlessly.

Bring a Piece of Video Art into Your Space!

I’m offering these vibrant stills from this avant-garde video art project, printed on (60 x 34 cm) aluminium panels for just £150 + p&p each. (Larger scale, up to 120cm wide, available on request!) Aluminium prints make the colours pop beautifully – they’re water and light resistant too, perfect for brightening up outdoor spaces or even your bathroom! Each piece is a bold, lasting slice of my creative world – ready to hang and enjoy. Drop me a message if you’d like to make an order!

mock-up of 60cm wide art

Preview

We created the content quickly, capturing footage in time for a live VJ show that weekend, where we planned to blend the footage with Marianna’s real-life installation of masks. It’s so satisfying when an artwork exists both in an exhibition space and projected on a giant screen!

Soundtrack: From India With Love

The VJ clips flowed so naturally at the exhibition that I decided to edit it into a stand-alone piece. Knowing her interest in sound, I asked Marianna if she would like to supply a soundtrack. As DJ Collage, she spins techno, dubstep and house but for this project, she offered the ambient soundscape, Unvironments Breathe, which she produced using live recordings of Indian ceremonies and festivals, with soft breath work. The track is 30 minutes long but I selected a section that perfectly matches the experimental arty feel of this video.

Meet Marianna

Marianna and I first met at a group art exhibition where we both shared deeply, our personal stories about our artwork during the artist talk. I immediately admired her fearlessness and the highly skilled craft that shines through her innovative fabric sculptures and paintings. Working together felt effortless – the best kind of collaboration! You can discover more of Marianna’s work on her Instagram: @marianna_the_un.

Marianna previously produced and hosted, Arts and Culture Hour with Marianna. It was a monthly radio program that took listeners on a journey through arts and cultural events, festivals, exhibitions and interviews with creatives from Baix Ebre, Catalonia, and beyond.

You can find out more about the O’Reilly’s creative expression on their website: www.theunstitute.org