Red Rubber Road: their work has always dealt with the topics of identity, censorship and secrecy
Red Rubber Road is the shared identity of artist duo AnaHell and Nathalie Dreier (Berlin/Zurich).
In their work, the artists weave performative dream-like narratives in which the role of the individual always takes second place to a new and greater common entity. They explore themes of identity, relationships, dissociation and technology. Bodies that tell a story, or seemingly wait for us to tell their story.
The photographic project Garden of Just Enough will be on display at the Magazzini TuMiTurbi and on Saturday, May 11th at 5:00 PM there will be the opportunity to meet them.
We met them in these days and they told us that there is an urgency they see on a global scale of people leaning towards polarization, ideologies, dogmas, the so-called ‘right’ way to think.
How do your photographic projects come to life? What is the process and your sources of inspiration?
Mostly, our work emerges by being inspired by our immediate circumstances: our surroundings, our environment, our mood, and, since we work a lot with self-portraiture, the state of our bodies. We also find that the constraints that situations offer can be a great driving force of creativity and source of inspiration. We especially explored this during the pandemic in 2020 with our series ‘Together A Part’ in which we started using screens to connect with each other visually from different countries.
For ‘Garden of Just Enough’, the project that we are presenting for the first time at INSIGHT Foto Festival, we were also inspired by circumstances and constraints, but this time the process has been deeper and more personal.
We investigate the circumstances of our lives, our physical and mental constraints during our upbringing in an isolated cult, and how this affected our sense of self throughout the years.
Working on this project has been a much longer process than usual. Apart from photography, this project includes video, sound, archival material and AI, which was inspired by the different types of media that dictated our lives as children and the new technologies that are used to dictate lives now.
Our work has always dealt with the topics of identity, censorship and secrecy and in “Garden of Just Enough” we use these to deconstruct and reconstruct our own story.
What is urgent for you?
There is an urgency we see on a global scale of people leaning towards polarization, ideologies, dogmas, the so-called ‘right’ way to think. Even social media bubbles are built with algorithms that feed us our own belief systems, which may lead to black and white thinking. So much is being censored. Anything from cult-like thinking and cancel culture to actual cults and high-control groups can thrive in this kind of environment. We think it is urgent to pay attention to this topic and use critical thinking more than ever.
And how can the photographic medium tell this theme?
The photographic medium is so versatile that it allows us to create visual narratives in so many ways. This leaves endless possibilities to speak to an audience – and also to allow for interpretation.
Not only individual photographs, but the convergence of images can evoke subtle to very strong and unsettling emotions. For instance, we choose to use editing, censorship and hiding to tell a story. By taking the viewer on a journey in which they never see the full picture, we aim to arouse a certain awareness and curiosity to the hidden things going on in the world that we cannot see.
