THE TELL TALE ROOMS (2023)
THE TELL-TALE ROOMS is a 12-minute father/daughter collaboration by Andrew and Eden Kötting, experienced as an immersive installation, that leads us on a journey into artist, Eden’s, fantastical world. Blending immersive animation, archive and live action, it celebrates the wonders of Eden’s rare neurological syndrome by opening up the fusty doors of perception into a world of 360 virtual reality.
CONTEXT & REVIEWS
Excerpt from the essay ‘A PLENITUDE OF MUCHNESS’ By Iain Sinclair
New Art Projects Gallery - London - Catalogue
GO TELL IT ON THE MOUNTAIN.
The visionary climax to the collaboration between Andrew and Eden Kötting, from sea to forest to the cosmos, comes when you are strapped into a VR headset for a hallucinogenic hyper-reality tour around Louyre, the hideaway Pyrenean farmhouse. Those who are able to enjoy this experience are the truly privileged: disorientated, discombobulated, shaken and definitively stirred. It would be tempting to stay with the opening vision on the mountain summit and the spinning panorama of grey rock. A sculpted landscape of legend. As close as we are going to come to heaven. But we are prodded onwards by our unseen digital shepherd, Virgil to this lost paradise, to drift around rooms and spaces where we can spin whichever way we choose.
CPH DOX Catalogue 2023
Andrew and Eden Kötting have been collaborating for as long as they can remember. Fatherdaughter, a conjoined entity, manufacturing their art in a remote Pyrenean farmhouse or a light industrial unit in St Leonards-on-Sea. The Tell-Tale Rooms is a new and exciting direction for their artistic ambition.
Situated inside a VR replica of an old farm-house deep in the French Pyrenees. The ‘real’ house has been home to Eden and Andrew Kötting on-and-off for over 30 years. In these rooms you walk amongst the artworks, memories and dreams of Eden, a visually impaired, neuro-divergent artist. Our interactions with the Tell-Tale Rooms are guided by floating animated 3D Tell-Tale heads that appear adrift and in conjunction with randomizing code there is an element of unpredictability and chance linked to the proceedings; one minute a room might be huge and another it might be miniscule, one minute there might be snow outside and in the next minute glorious sunshine.
The Tell-Tale Rooms is situated inside a VR replica of an old farm-house deep in the French Pyrenees. The real house has been home to Eden and Andrew Kötting on-and-off for over 30 years but once we enter the house, compiled using photogrammetry and into The Tell-Tale Rooms, Eden takes us on a journey into places that we have not been before. Guided by Eden and the Tell-Tale Heads, we encounter a series of Tell-Tale Rooms: The Room of Memory, The Room Of Nostalgia, The Room of Make-Believe, The Room of Hope, The Room of Forgetting, The Room of Confabulation….
In these rooms there are trace elements from Eden growing from a baby, through adolescence, and into adulthood. Texts written in Eden’s handwriting drift within the space, offering translation for her limited speech patterns, advice for the future, or quotes from the past. The voice of her Great-Grandmother Gladys reminisces about their time together making their film Gallivant. Snippets of antiquated public information broadcasts and mysterious voiceovers help contextualise how far society has come when dealing with disability and diversity. Eden’s story is memorable, playful and hauntological. Hope is in the air and everywhere you look around….
TYKE FILMS -THE TELL TALE ROOMS
PROJECT ARTWORKS - THE TELL TALE ROOMS
THE OBSERVER BUILDING - THE TELL TALE ROOMS
