Holly Childs & Gediminas Žygus explore privacy and political conspiracy theories on ‘Hydrangea’s Just the Password Though, Right’?

Borne out of a series of performances influenced by conspiracy theories, Hydrangea is a multidisciplinary project featuring design elements from Metahaven.

Writer and artist Holly Childs and sound artist Gediminas Žygus come together for Hydrangea, a multidisciplinary project that draws influences from political conspiracy theories, post-internet theories of history and both artists’ lifelong experiences with rave culture.

Combining fiction, poetry, and cinematic sound design that nods to both Disney string sections and the impressionistic piano of Maurice Ravel, Holly Childs and Gediminas Žygus ask: “As individuals are siloed online, can rifts in reality ever be reconciled? Is history a form of science fiction? And are narrators ever reliable?”

The artists draw connections between the politics of privacy, including passwords, codes and encryption, and the ways in which political theorists such as Steve Bannon, Aleksandr Dugin and Vladislav Surkov utilise conspiracy to lock, unlock and weaponise information to design realities for submission and control.

According to their label, Subtext, these operators have “made use of contemporary and postmodern artistic strategies to design narrative uncertainty – covertly braiding together questionable truths, slippery narratives and bespoke reinterpretations of history for undisclosed political ends”. It is this methodology that Childs and Žygus explore and reconfigure in Hydrangea.

The project has been heavily influenced by art and film collective Metahaven, who have not only created artwork for the project, but have also made a lyric video to accompany the album’s first single, ‘Hydrangea’s Just the Password Though, Right?’

‘Hydrangea’s Just the Password Though, Right?’ is taken from Hydrangea, which arrives via Subtext on November 20 and is available to pre-order now.