When encountering the work in Blue Room by Ivan Örkény and Sandy White there is often a feeling of having stepped into a world which is in the middle of rearranging itself. There is also a feeling of gaining an illicit look into a workshop after dark when all the machines come to life and emulate their creators and their perceived surroundings in a mechanical dance macabre. It is within this setting that Örkény & White place not only us, but also their protagonists. Like us, these characters bears witness to a world reconstr... Read more

When encountering the work in Blue Room by Ivan Örkény and Sandy White there is often a feeling of having stepped into a world which is in the middle of rearranging itself. There is also a feeling of gaining an illicit look into a workshop after dark when all the machines come to life and emulate their creators and their perceived surroundings in a mechanical dance macabre.

It is within this setting that Örkény & White place not only us, but also their protagonists. Like us, these characters bears witness to a world reconstructing itself, reinventing itself and like us they share our point of view – that from within the machine. Here we are all lost in the truest sense, like being placed inside an ever-changing labyrinth or lost on dark streets between the towering structures of an unknown metropolis. The only point of navigation comes from within and so must be found before any further mapping is possible.

Consequently we follow the faceless protagonist’s endeavours to succeed in a dynamic landscape, which is increasingly confusing and unforgiving. In this regard there is a definite attempt at not only mapping an outer landscape, but also an inner one.

Blue Room challenges it’s protagonists to conform to these landscapes in order to function, in order to move on. New obstacles and new settings demands new faces and new characters to be invented in response and so while slowly adapting to a fragmented world the protagonist becomes equally fragmented and ever changing. Slowly the two merge and the difference between them becomes negliable until the entire process starts over again. The disconnected and industrial elements continuously find new use and life before becoming redundant and being discarded. So wave after wave we are continuously held back by a turbulent sea without anything to navigate by but a tumultuous barren horizon. It is within this maelstrom of animation, film and mechanised sculpture that Örkény & White catches us and which we find so hard to escape from again.