COME TO BED

COME TO BED (2021) is the first collective work by Manuel Groothuysen and Diane Mahín and the starting point of a shared theme: being trapped in established bodily and social patterns.

The video shows two figures, each behind its own window, suspended in a network of audio cables. They are intertwined not only physically, but also in thought and language. Every moment seems predetermined. Every thought, emotion, breath and slip of the tongue arises synchronously in both one and the other.

Groothuysen and Mahín are brother and sister (NL/Iranian) and, after theoretical studies in social sciences and humanities, both studied at Toneelacademie Maastricht. They find common ground in their existential and absurdist views on reality and how humans are subject to the manipulation of other (non-)human entities. Those ideas can be overwhelming and confrontational but when you zoom out, also liberating and painfully funny. They depict those feelings in the hope of giving mental suffering a new framework.