VIREGALIA

Eyebeam, New York

Combining graffiti, fashion, technology and performance.

Commission

Created as part of Di’s residency at Eyebeam Centre for Art and Technology in New York City.

Experience

An exploration of the body through architectural space Vi-Regalia discovers the hidden narratives that lurk within the everyday. This series of fragmented 2-dimensional structures are left in public spaces for serendipitous encounters enticing the inquisitive to touch and play. Transformable they merge with the urban landscape growing up the wall or spilling onto the pavement scaring the land like acid coloured lichen.

One of these street interventions was documented by Di and Leanna Palmer using stop-motion techniques illustrating the interactive qualities of this viral sculpture. This event culminated in a magical shape-shifting street ballet.

Category

Film · Wearables

Vi-Regalia are a strain of urban virus peculiar to the City of New York. Colloquially referred to as the vertical virus these eccentric organisms are most at home glistening on the walls of abattoirs in the meatpacking district. Their iridescent scales have evolved over the past 50 years with an aim to lure unsuspecting urbanites. This commuter-courtship is brief with the sole purpose of establishing temporary human residence as they hitch between the meatpacking district and 23rd street. Once engaged Vi-Regalia romp and cavort on the backs of their host throwing them into a playful yet obligatory ‘ballet of the sidewalk’. During rush hour Vi-Regalia hitch from secretary to truck truck to bank-worker and bank-worker to pensioner – disengaging and engaging in a silent and graceful pirouette. NB. Vi-Regalia will never approach children and are rarely seen to associate with artists or musicians.