2022

Isabel Margot

SA

University of South Australia
Bachelor of Contemporary Art

Isabel Margot’s practice evades definitive confines. Margot conceptualises bodies as sites, archives, languages, constructs, postures, one-sided dialogues and façades. Through her work, Margot leaves space open for interpretation, rather than encouraging fixed readings. Her recent project interrogates the embodied effects of digital technologies.

Taking its title from Samsung’s Terms and Conditions, Entity(ies)”) arising out of, relating to, or connected in any way with arose from the realisation that an overheating laptop and an exerted body share a similar warmth. By assessing how we interact with screens, Margot’s work aims to challenge the shortened attention spans of the digital age. Incorporating her interest in virtual architecture and design, the work encourages multi-directional scrolling, subverting our understanding of online navigation as vertically aligned and linear. As viewers traverse the site on their mobile phones, the way their bodies are held and positioned will alter as they adjust to the device. In this way, the work cannot exist without the performative choreography of bodies.Whilst users flip their phones to read sections of inverted text, the device’s screen display auto-adjusts its orientation, creating an inter-related dynamic that necessitates unfamiliar negotiation. As the viewer gazes at the screen, its emanating blue light reaches the back of the retina, foregrounding bodily porosity.