Left Hand of Darkness (after Ursula K. Le Guin)

2008
3D animation, sound

---

Left Hand of Darkness (after Ursula K. Le Guin) is a 3-channel animation that projects a swirl of objects, layered pages of text, choreographed dancing bodies and a set of anatomical drawings of human genitalia. The literary reference is Ursula K. Le Guin’s (1969) science fiction novel about a civilization where gender is provisional and changes according to emotional desire. On the journey across a distant intergalactic glacier a man becomes a woman and mindspeech is the language of communication. The animated hypnotic rotatory disc points towards an alternative architectural logic, and also to the rotatory discs of Marcel Duchamp. Other references in the work include the experimental film of Maya Deren, and Edgar Allen Poe’s A Descent into the Maelstrom.

---

Installation views: What if, MOCAD, Detroit, 2009; Ann Lislegaard, Thomas Bayrle, Raven Row, London, 2009; Danskjävlar – a Swedish Declaration of Love, Charlottenborg, Copenhagen, 2008