THE FRIEND

created by  

John Sanborn

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Festival Videoformes

March 18 - April 4, 2021

in the the Chapelle de l’Ancien Hôpital Général, Clermont-Ferrand, France

 

Everyone wants to believe in something.

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We spend our lives searching for ideas, structures and people to invest our faith in, because we think they will provide us with answers to questions we KNOW cannot be answered.

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This is why we love American Messiahs.

But we have questions. Like: what causes us to follow claims of personal divinity, off-kilter pseudoscience, and communication with the dead or prophecies of worldly glory from spiritual entrepreneurs? This work exploits our fixation with a modern representation of the most zealous exponents of America’s unofficial national faith: a spiritual smorgasbord of hucksterism, and confused but positive thinking, seasoned through an invented spiritual movement known as New Thought.

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This 17 channel installed work presents the leader of New Thought as a mysterious but charismatic figure, who calls himself “The Friend”, delivering seven sermons filled with instruction, divination, personal confession and a sticky hot mess of ambiguity.

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The Friend is accompanied by 8 Saints, of dubious distinction, and animations of their relics, who testify to the divination of this new religion and celebrate their freedom to build a utopia, consisting of damaged souls.

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The Friend premiered in March 2021 at the Festival Videoformes in Clermont-Ferrand, France, installed in the Chapelle de l’Ancien Hôpital Général. The Friend is scheduled to show at Festival Access in October 2021, ZKM March-August 2022 and Transcultures in November 2022.

 

The Friend is played by John Cameron Mitchell.