After the Empire, 2008

In her experimental performances, installations, and video works, Elodie Pong examines the interplay of globalization and popular culture. Again and again she returns to the analysis of the influence of cultural codes, their translocation, and the current state of cultural, political, and sexual identity.
In her video work After the Empire, Pong has icons from popular culture and political history collide with each other in an absurd scenario: Marilyn Monroe woos Karl Marx, a Japanese version of Minnie Mouse pores over sex ads and dances by herself, while a bored Elvis recites the lyrics of his songs, a young woman, alias Martin Luther King, meets Pong’s grandmother from the Zurich Oberland, and a very shy Robin assures himself of Batman’s affections in Swiss German. Against the backdrop of a post-apocalyptic industrial landscape, the actors embody the symbolic longings and utopias of the characters – but they seem to be trapped in their plagiarized existence, isolated and unable to realize their dreams or even to establish relationships to each other. (AM)