THE SWAN TOOL | MIRANDA JULY

Miranda July is a performer, director, screenwriter, and writer. Her extensive practice produces works that involves performance, documentation, video, and participatory experience.

The Swan Tool is a film that emerges from a live performance in which July (as Lisa) is literally placed at the center of the stage, between two screens positioned at different heights, where the moving images serve both as the set design and co-protagonists.
Lisa is a woman who works at an insurance company and, faced with the existential (and substantial) dilemma of whether to live or die, chooses to draw a circle in the backyard, dig a hole, and ‘bury’ herself inside it. This does not prevent her from acting, from continuing to exist in a suspended state between two dimensions. July/Lisa moves on stage—a narrow walkway—alternating between one background and the other, physically shifting a symbolic object, a chair.

Where is our place in the world? To whom do we belong, and what truly belongs to us?
Of course, July does not provide answers, but rather creates a mechanism for the direct (and indirect) involvement of the audience, encouraging them to experience the emotions she lives on stage—not as ‘compassion’ but rather as a first-person experience. This is also achieved through the sound design by DJ Zac Love, in a complex and layered work.
The images alternate between documentation and realism, with dense and suffused colors, a rarefied atmosphere, like the improvised balloon made from a plastic bag that floats (or levitates), only an illusion of lightness.

Ambiguity and irony, circumstances as bizarre as they are familiar—July manages to transcend the typical empathy between artist and audience through a complex, though not loud, architecture of metaphors and symbolism. This remains deliberately accessible and decipherable, drawing the viewer emotionally into the scene.

The artwork is part of the solo exhibition “Miranda July: New Society,” curated by Mia Locks at Osservatorio Fondazione Prada, Milan, March 7–October 28, 2024.

Miranda July
The Swan Tool, 2000
Portland Institute of Contemporary Art, Portland, Oregon
Photo by Harrell Fletcher
Courtesy of Miranda July Studio

16/10/24