“I was introduced to artist A_Marcel’s work in the fall of 2019 and was privileged to experience their work in Fountain Street’s 2020 call for art exhibition, “Out of Place.” Their work pushes ones understanding of space, time, and identity in ways that bring out the absurdity in the moment, and forces the viewer to confront the status quo.”
A_Marcel
“By exploiting the digital actor or gif, I ask the viewer to consider the conditions of
unpaid labor, of unseen labor, and labor currently labeled “essential.””
State of Emergency: Refuge/Refugees
This video is part of the State of Emergency project, a project that links joy, activism and art. The large blanket in the video symbolizes both our collective humanity and the state of emergency we are in from the local housing crisis, to national immigration policies, to global environmental catastrophes.
The blanket symbolizes the safety and protective sphere of the domestic in contrast with the violence upon this home that is earth, that is this nation, that is this city, that is the domestic daily sphere.
Performers: A_Marcel and Eli Nixon
On the Clock
A_Marcel’s “On the Clock” is a video composite/remix of a Feb 2020 guerrilla street performance in Chicago in front of the Trump Tower Hotel. The 12 minute performance was a carnivalesque processional and migratory feast (hot dogs abound) in spite of, and to spite, the current US Administration, ICE and our general state of emergency.
Marcel deploys and celebrates the language of memes to subvert our crisis of modernity and ever encroaching systems of surveillance. “On the Clock” proclaims that a politic of joy and ethic of care and collaboration will key to toppling the ever rearing head of fascism. The future is now and it is absurd.
ABOUT A_MARCEL
A_Marcel is a speculative conceptual artist based in Boston. Their practice is transdisciplinary and draws from the vernacular of graphic design, critical and queer theory, the theatre of the absurd, music videos, and performance art. A_Marcel’s work is a play of text and image, a pitting of the real and surreal, and a disorienting glitche of fact and fiction. Marcel amplifies the language of the meme to counter the mimetic demands of the mundane. Their work is politically personal and personally political commentary. They’re obsessed with heterotopias and hot dogs. A_Marcel is a copy of a copy without an original.