In Vampyr, a video installation framed as a futuristic set, the classic seduction between the vampire and victim is endlessly repeated.

Twin video projections, rear screen projected on paired hanging diffusion screens, are hung so as to reference portraiture as well as “futuristic” technologies such as holography. With the artists assuming the roles of vampire and victim, the projected sequences recapture the stereotypical and camp-laden gestures of the vampire film – the vampire leans in to sink its fangs, the victim recoils – in a minimalist treatment of 1920’s German cinema combined with a certain melodramatic excess.

culptural elements include a large transparent plastic sphere and a miniature mountain range, suggesting the gothic and the sublime, the sublime and the ridiculous. Vampyr combines a comedic irony with the nevertheless still charged figure of the vampire, who often stands in for the spectres of a feudal aristocracy, the racial, cultural and sexual other, any number of diverse parasitic oppressions and capital itself.

Tricia Middleton and Joel Taylor have worked together since 1998, collaborating in the production of short films and of installation and single channel video works.