hermione spriggs
hermione spriggs
hermione spriggs

THE THING IS ALL AROUND ITSELF, site-responsive sculpture (silk, tent poles, netting, custom aluminium stakes) & 16mm film transferred to digital, exhibited in various formats. 2014, with Curtis Tamm

lecture performance for the Lorquin Entomological Society, Bioquip, Los Angeles (2014)


lecture performance for the Lorquin Entomological Society, Bioquip, Los Angeles (2014)


lecture performance for the Lorquin Entomological Society, Bioquip, Los Angeles (2014)


lecture performance for the Lorquin Entomological Society, Bioquip, Los Angeles (2014)


lecture performance for the Lorquin Entomological Society, Bioquip, Los Angeles (2014)

“Humans can live on an island only by forgetting what an island represents. Islands are either from before or for after humankind.” – René Malaise

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Malaise is a feeling of sickness or unease. It is also the name of a fly trap, modelled on a human tent, and the name of the man who invented it.

The Swedish biologist and explorer René Malaise (1892 – 1978) based his design for the Malaise trap on the form and proportions of his own canvas tent. He then used this trap as an entomological tool to gather insect flight-path data – information which he used to chart his way towards Atlantis. Malaise hypothesised that Atlantis had sunk somewhere close to Iceland in the Mid Atlantic Rift.

The Thing Is All Around Itself continues this journey, devoting itself to the intimate unravelling of Malaise and its architectural/operative inversion from a tent (a utopian place of human shelter) into a death trap for flying insects. The Thing Is All Around Itself is also a topology which plots the event-structure of the fly trap upon a lecture upon a film upon the context in which the film is presented. This context includes my evolving relationship with my collaborator, the land beneath our feet and our posthumous conversations with René Malaise himself. A gap opens up. An earthquake occurs.


video & 16mm film transferred to video (1 hr, looped) installed with quadrophonic sound and live performance, including documentation of the earthquake that occurred during a previous presentation we gave of the film at Bioquip Entomology Supply Store, Los Angeles. 


video & 16mm film transferred to video (1 hr, looped) installed with quadrophonic sound and live performance, including documentation of the earthquake that occurred during a previous presentation we gave of the film at Bioquip Entomology Supply Store, Los Angeles. 


video & 16mm film transferred to video (1 hr, looped) installed with quadrophonic sound and live performance, including documentation of the earthquake that occurred during a previous presentation we gave of the film at Bioquip Entomology Supply Store, Los Angeles. 


video & 16mm film transferred to video (1 hr, looped) installed with quadrophonic sound and live performance, including documentation of the earthquake that occurred during a previous presentation we gave of the film at Bioquip Entomology Supply Store, Los Angeles. 


video & 16mm film transferred to video (1 hr, looped) installed with quadrophonic sound and live performance, including documentation of the earthquake that occurred during a previous presentation we gave of the film at Bioquip Entomology Supply Store, Los Angeles. 


video & 16mm film transferred to video (1 hr, looped) installed with quadrophonic sound and live performance, including documentation of the earthquake that occurred during a previous presentation we gave of the film at Bioquip Entomology Supply Store, Los Angeles. 


video & 16mm film transferred to video (1 hr, looped) installed with quadrophonic sound and live performance, including documentation of the earthquake that occurred during a previous presentation we gave of the film at Bioquip Entomology Supply Store, Los Angeles. 


video & 16mm film transferred to video (1 hr, looped) installed with quadrophonic sound and live performance, including documentation of the earthquake that occurred during a previous presentation we gave of the film at Bioquip Entomology Supply Store, Los Angeles. 


video & 16mm film transferred to video (1 hr, looped) installed with quadrophonic sound and live performance, including documentation of the earthquake that occurred during a previous presentation we gave of the film at Bioquip Entomology Supply Store, Los Angeles. 

hermione spriggs
fly in the eye
hermione spriggs
malaise: the thing is all around itself