Three Of A Perfect Pair

Overview

Siblings Dan and Dom Angeloro spend their days laughing behind pop culture’s back in their writing, video art, installations, photo-collages and occasional curatorial gig. They currently have a new work featured in Three of a Perfect Pair, an exhibition at MOP Gallery which brings together some of the very best young artist partnerships, including Ms&Mr, Eleanor & James Avery and Jaki Middleton & David Lawrey. Somehow, they found time to chat with us about their work …

How did it all begin?

Soda_Jerk was officially born in 2002, but we like to think our artistic collaboration began at ages 12 and 14, when we got our first video camera. We got our friends together and 'sweded' late-80s teen flick Heathers. It's the only video work we've ever performed in; Dan played Heather #3 and Dominique was Betty Finn. A decade later, we were still mucking around with equipment.

What role does remixing play in your work?

As artists, we only work with found material so remixing is the underlying process of everything we do. It's a form of improvisation in that we never try to predetermine how a video project will play out. 

What’s the appeal of video as a medium?

Our overriding fascination with video has to do with the complex relationship to time that is implicit in recorded media. It's a science fiction thing; we think of sampling as a form of time travel, a concrete way of directly manipulating the space-time continuum.

What has been your favourite project to date? 

Last year, we made a 3-channel video installation 'Astro Black: A History of Hip-Hop (Epsidodes 0-2)' (2008) for Primavera at the Museum of Contemporary Art. It's an episodic work that came out of our interest in the cultural theory of Afrofuturism. A key Afrofuturist figure is the cosmic jazz musician Sun Ra, who envisaged music as a portal to alternate universes. We think of remixing in a similar way so, conceptually, we wanted to create a work that drew these elements together. It also enabled us to pay respect to hip-hop innovators like Grandmaster Flash, Kool Herc, Afrika Bambaataa, Chuck D and Flavor Flav.

Are you informed by the work of other remix and collage artists?

Absolutely. We really believe you have to know where you're from to know where you're at. We have always been fascinated with the relationship between video sampling and hip-hop turntablism. We are also interested in the found-footage practices of visual artists like Craig Baldwin, Candice Breitz, Martin Sastre and Philip Brophy. 

What are you working on next?

We're currently finishing a video for Federation Square in Melbourne called After the Rainbow. This video is part of a wider body of work called The Dark Matter Cycle, which began in 2005 with 'The Phoenix Portal' and looks at the intersection of cinema, temporality and death.