ZAYNE ARMSTRONG
Cup
multimedia installation
All You Need to Know BEFORE You Go
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ "A Night to Remember"
Cup is a hidden gem that combines the best of alternative spaces. The ambiance is eclectic and vibrant, making it a great place to unwind with friends. We clinked our glasses together in a toast and reveled in the drama of Days unfolding right at the next table.
⭐⭐⭐⭐ "Plastered Paradise!"
Cup is a breath of fresh air in Berlin's nightlife scene. It's a one-of-a-kind experience that left us plastered and intrigued. Highly recommend!
⭐ "Not My Cup of Tea"
I heard great things about Cup, but it fell flat for me. YADIEL gave the worst customer service. The plaster concept felt gimmicky, and the attempt to integrate complex narratives into the atmosphere was confusing. It seemed more like a chaotic theater production than a relaxed night out. Maybe it's an acquired taste, but I won't be returning.
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I am a quick learner, adaptable, motivated, self-assured, I put my heart into everything I do, I’m trustworthy, I work overtime, I’m single, I will never have kids, and getting any gig would be my biggest dream. My politics and ethics are relative, I’m multilingual, I can work from anywhere, on my own laptop, and I can start as an intern, because it will help me on the path to self realization.
By focusing on the realities of life in contemporary Berlin, with Days we look to the dying form of soap opera as a way to develop our practices and create a site for alternative community building.
Cultural critic Tania Modelski argued that the soap opera imitates human life by staging interpersonal experiences as a series of unrelated events, and that "this is not a world where detectives reestablish order, but a chaotic world where all perspectives have legitimacy and require empathy."
The initial goal of many soap operas was to sell soap products. This inadvertently produced a whole language of storytelling often thought to define trash-culture and preempt reality TV. But soaps have also often created resilient multi-layered communities comprising: the world of the characters, the community of cast and crew, as well as the engaged and dedicated audience of “housewives”. The genre has often prioritized continuity of production over narrative continuity, changing storylines to accommodate the parallel lives of its cast and crew, and in reaction to ratings and the desires of fans. The result is a lush melding pot of absurd narrative tropes––for instance endlessly killing-off and reviving characters––which offer an exciting foundation for a platform that has the potential to be resilient and adaptable. Days is an exploration of the soap opera genre, attending to this problematic yet prosperous history, a history that for many––at least North Americans and Norwegians like us––is defined by the heavily exported American daytime drama series Days of Our Lives (from here on referred to as DoOL), our love and hate of which was our starting point.
Running every weekday since 1965, DoOL is one of the longest running TV shows in the world. It is special in the way that it has supported the entire careers of a number of actors, so much so that some of their births and eventual deaths have been simultaneously represented on screen by the birth or death of their character. And to further blur the lines between the on- and off-screen, a whole tradition of publishing ‘soap rags’ developed, where in the shows many fans learn about the real lives of their favourite characters, and behind-the-scenes romances. In these ways, DoOL, like many soaps around the world, inadvertently became a docudrama, engaging in the complex process of self-representation (a la Peter Watkins’ ‘La Commune (Paris 1871)’, 2000, where a group of people are engaged in portraying the history of their neighborhood through their own interpersonal relationships). In docudrama, fiction can often lean towards drama therapy, as with the trope in reality TV of a “big brother” both offering advice towards maintaining one's role in the community as well as inciting bankable entertaining drama. Real people’s problems hashed out “in character”. We see this special narrative mode as having the potential to promote visibility and representation not only for glamorous soap actors and reality TV stars, but also for the various precarious lives navigating the challenges of recession, gig-economics and Covid.
In opposition to the methods of soap opera––historically made for and about a number of women, but produced by soap companies to exploit the captive audience, reproducing certain norms of patriarchy––Days is produced by, for and about the lifestyles of a growing class of the precarious laborers, analyzed in detail by the British economist Guy Standing and commonly known as the ‘precariat’. Not only does this class lack representation, it’s also rather difficult to identify. Its members are unified by their lives distinctly lacking predictability and security, influencing mental and material well being.
The characters of DoOL are often fixated on marital fidelity, and discovering unknown blood relations. We are interested instead in characters whose lives hang between existential doom and courageous fights for visibility and poetic justice, who feel forced to bend the rules that were not made for them. To mirror the international city we live in, the writing of Days is in multiple languages (and with various accents), such as Arabic, English, German, French, Hebrew, Korean, Norwegian, Russian, Spanish and Turkish.
Can a serial artist film project like ours be a site for community building and counter the isolated precarity of those involved? With an increasing proportion of the population “enjoying” professional freedom, what does this freedom offer up for exploitation, both willingly and against one's will? What can the many side-by-side storylines of soap opera do to open the door for solidarity amongst The Precariat? What possibilities for “dreaming” lie beneath the frustrations of abstract, emotional and unpaid labor? And how does the context of the art allow for experimentation in how we tell the stories that define us?
Through having a solo exhibition at the kunsthalle Fotogalleriet in Oslo in October through December 2020, we were able to produce the pilot episode of Days, a 70 minute soap opera episode, showing lives of a number of characters struggling with issues of personal finances, housing, visa status, and employment while chasing aspirational dreams. We used this pilot episode to both test and establish working methods. The exhibition at Fotogalleriet consisted of two parts, of which one part of the gallery was dedicated to a multi-channel version of parts of the pilot episode of Days (produced in Berlin), and the other was live set and production site for the rest of the epsiode (produced in Oslo). The first part was shown within a reconstructed edition of the sets for this episode, featuring the fictional bar Cup, as well as a Store Front Space and a Tesla Cybertruck.
Days, NKR - Neue Kunstraum, Düsseldorf (DE)
Images by Johannes Bendzulla
Days, Fotogalleriet, Oslo (NO)
Images by Julie Hrnčířová
“Bar skin”:
Mahogany and zink bar, 2020
Digital print on lycra textile
400 x 110 x 60 cm
“Beer tap”:
Revolution of the mind (tap), 2020
Marbled wood
40 x 56.5 x 5 cm
“Extras paintings”:
Puppenköpfe Diptych, 2020
Oil on Arches paper
each 38.5 x 49.7 cm
Nicholas Korody Elizabeth Ravn
“Table cloths”: “Extras paintings”:
Hessian table cloths, 2020 Beate Behind Glass, 2020
Digital print on ripstop textile Oil on Arches paper
140 x 140 cm 45 x 58 cm
“Ashtrays”:
Revolution. A mindful marble game that helps you to focus., 2020
Marbled wood
20,2 x 24,6 x 20,2 cm
“Smartphones”:
iCrack, 2020
Wasa cracker, acrylic paint, RAM Mount smartphone holder
333 Boyz Official Yours, Boombox, 2020
Digital print on PVC-free mesh, wood armature
58 x 30 x 17 cm
A lover, 2020
Beer coaster
10 x 10 cm
Deflated, 2020
Chair covers of print on lycra
Dimensions variable
Plastered, 2020
Plaster coated drinking receptacles
Dimensions variable
10.11.-10.12.2023
GROUP SHOW: TV Gardener
NKR - Neue Kunstraum, Düsseldorf (DE)
with contributions from Ulrike Buck, Bob Kil, Nicholas Korody, Elizabeth Ravn and 333 Boyz (Sam Lubicz and Liam Morrison)
curated by Anne Schülke, Detlef Klepsch
20.08-24.09.2022
SOLO SHOW: Days
Fotogalleriet, Oslo (NO)
with contributions from Ulrike Buck, Bob Kil, Nicholas Korody, Elizabeth Ravn and 333 Boyz (Sam Lubicz and Liam Morrison)