Birth Series is a work that encapsulates the art making process into an installation divided into partitions. The visitors will navigate freely between the three partitions:

production room control room exhibition - exploring the traversed layers of the gallery;

The institutional and social environment has been explored within Lundahl & Seitl’s practice via the trope of ‘avatarism’ in the ‘Birthday Series’, beginning with Christer’s Birthday shown in 2007 at Ken, London, and its precedent Christer’s Birthday II (retrospectively titled), shown as part of the Whitechapel Gallery’s programme of

late night events. This series, including Martina’s Birthday, (Cell Project Space, London, 2010), James’ Birthday (Battersea Arts Centre, London, 2010) and Birth Series (Tate Modern, surrealist gallery).

It is a series of disruptive pieces in which performers carrying miniature cameras attached to headsets move through and unsettle a social gathering. Through these headsets they hear the directions of visitors known as ‘avatars’ who sit away from the space and, by watching corresponding television monitors, direct these subservient performers: “move that person’s arm,” “walk into the corner,” “lie on the floor.” Directly manipulated and disturbed by the presence of these performers, the social arena is infiltrated by bodies which act against its schema. Even those not partaking in the work sense an environmental shift in the museum’s spaces, spaces so commonly prescribed by institutional rubrics and behavioural codes.

Observation

“An uncanny feeling of someone else’s presence observing you through the avatars body, him/her being just a layer between two consciousness - a corporeal material for remote ventriloquism” BirthSeries, 2009