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Watch: Lydia Cambron’s One-Woman 2001 Homage, 2020: an isolation odyssey
2020: an isolation odyssey from lydia cambron on Vimeo.
Brooklyn-based designer Lydia Cambron — whose commercial work focuses on retail environments and who is fascinated, according to her website, “in the narrative ability of products and objects” — has used her quarantine days to make a witty and poignant one-woman/one-apartment homage to the final sequence of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001. From Cambron:
2020: an isolation odyssey is a reenactment of the iconic finale of 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968). Restaged in the context of home quarantine, the journey through time adapts to the mundane dramas of self-isolation–poking fun at the navel-gazing saga of life alone and indoors.
This project began in late March and was completed in late May, spanning the height of the pandemic in New York City. Staged in a one bedroom Brooklyn apartment, 2020 presents an obvious similarity to the domestic setting of 2001. The stacked videos and synced movements also reveal parallels in emotion. The narrowness of daily life in a single space, transitioning from confusion to acceptance, a distorted sense of time, and ‘returning’ after a transformational event–all experiences analogous to quarantine.
The adapted version delineates the passing of time through wardrobe rather than age, identifying each phase of the character’s journey with a product of self care or PPE. Tools of private entertainment or self betterment are also used as props, questioning our confidence in products and productivity as anchors during times of uncertainty. Multitasking while #wfh, conjuring guilt or longing with unused exercise equipment, your entire being reduced to a measure of time–these scenes all illustrate the absurd comedy of trying to maintain control during this unprecedented and unpredictable time.
I especially like the cut to outer space at the end.
