With air travel becoming cheaper and distances smaller, the choice of where one lives becomes extended but questions of where one is from or what is home become more complex. Dressed as a hybrid of Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz and Alice from Alice in Wonderland, Sophia New walked the streets, parks, airports, hotels, houses, flats and beaches of the places she encountered over a six month period; among them a house in Bristol, a studio in Berlin, Munich Airport and a beach in Newcastle. This walking became a contemplative questioning of place. A written dialogue between these two characters emerged as a way of elucidating questions that were pressing for her and the letters became a way of wearing her heart on her sleeve.
The walking sections were shot using the video function on a digital stills camera in order to produce the degraded, almost super 8 quality and reduced frame rate. This method also provided the artist with a sense of freedom while shooting, as she appeared to be just viewing photos, rather than filming.
Curiouser and Curiouser is to be viewed on a small screen installed into a musical box.
Sophia New received a Masters Degree in Feminist Performance at Bristol University in 1998 has been making solo performances and working as a performer since. In 2000 she received a Breathing Space Commission from the Arnolfini, Bristol, and in 2001 an Artsadmin Bursary, London. She has also collaborated on touring projects with Reckless Sleepers and Gob Squad, and performed in pieces by Forced Entertainment, Penelope Wehrli and Andreas Kebelmann. In 2002 she co-founded plan b with Daniel Belasco Rogers, together they make durational performances, installations and locative media projects. In recent years Sophia has been making performative video works that are distributed by 235 media and have been shown in festivals in Berlin, Cardiff, London, Frankfurt Glasgow and Tallin.
http://www.planbperformance.net/sophia/
