Pil + Galia Kollectiv, The Future for Less | 2006 | 10 min | DV | UK
Pil + Galia Kollectiv, Better Future, Wolf-Shaped | 2008 | 15min | DV | UK
Pil + Galia Kollectiv, The Future is Now | 2009 | 23 min | DV | UK
In November 2005, IKEA announced a new store opening in Edmonton, London to be accompanied by an offer of a significant price reduction on leather sofas. When 6000 people arrived to compete for the discount, a riot ensued, injuring 16 shoppers. The Future Trilogy takes this event as the starting point for a speculative history of a fictional future. The Future for Less imagines the consumer riot as the foundation of a new totalitarian state religion imposing the tenets of modernism on the masses. In Better Future, Wolf-Shaped a rural cult perverts this official creed through pagan rituals of architectural worship performed at Celtic burial sites in Cornwall. The Future is Now, stages the triumphant conquest of the industrial wasteland surrounding IKEA Edmonton, London as a popular uprising, revisiting the original riot as a future reenactment.
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The Pil and Galia Kollectiv are London-based artists, writers and curators working in collaboration. Their work addresses the legacy of modernism and explores avant-garde discourses of the twentieth century and the way they operate in the context of a changing landscape of creative work and instrumentalized leisure. They are interested in the relationship between art and politics and the role irony plays in its current articulation. They often use choreographed movement and ritual as both an aesthetic and a thematic dimension, juxtaposing consumer rites and religious ceremonies. They are contributing editors at Art Papers and have written for many publications including Art Monthly and Mute. They have presented live work at the 2nd Herzliya Biennial, the 5th Berlin Biennial and the 5th Montreal Biennial, as well as at Late at Tate Britain. They have had solo shows at The Showroom, London and S1 Artspace, Sheffield, and their work has been exhibited in Apocatopia, Castlefield Gallery, Manchester and Roll it to Me, Collective Gallery, Edinburgh. They work as lecturers in Fine Art at the University of Kent.
