Danny / No More Reality

The gallery offers two exhibition spaces set in one another – Danny and No More Reality.

The first exhibition space, Danny takes its name from the comic character Danny the Street created by Grant Morrison in the early 90’s. Danny the Street is a living and sentient piece of urban geography who can magically and seamlessly place themshelf in any environment  without any disruption to their landscape.  

Parreno conceives Danny as a multi-part automaton living and moving in response to live data collected from its surroundings. An artificial pond, a mirrored shutter, and a futuristic, robotic sound-system are among the elements that define the choreographed space.  Life simulation and artificial intelligence algorithms are integral to the ways Danny becomes manifest through endless, evolving movements and sonic structures.

A second exhibition space is the film entitled No More Reality. It brings together ten films of Parreno’s, previously known as Anywhere (2001), June 8th 1968 (2009), Invisible Boy (2010), C.H.Z. (2011) Marilyn (2012) The Crowd, (2015) Li Yan (2016) Anywhen, (2016), Owl in Daylight (2020), and Goya, (2021). The films have been merged into one another to form a single coherent narrative. Previously unseen footage has been edited to produce a new diegetic world. The film tells a story from a subjective perspective, as a character with a unique identity. This freely existing subjectivity passes from body to body throughout the film.

The ensemble of the two exhibition spaces is designed to host this specific film and produce a very particular acoustic space. Sound is not mixed using the traditional ambisonics of theatres.  Instead, the room uses an active acoustics principle allowing the resonance of the room to be adjusted. The sound is hushed in comparison to a traditional cinema space, and it can resonate throughout the space. In No More Realitysound is never totally integrated to the moving image, tand the film’s characters become disembodied and present in the space. Through transonic presence the acoustics in which they exist within are shared with the audience.

For No More Reality, Parreno has collaborated with Darius Khondji, Director of Photography, Ael Dallier Vega, Editor and Nicolas Becker, Sound Supervisor. Danny has been constructed and programmed in the space by Johan Lescure, Alexander Dromgole, and Cengiz Hartlap.