Lovett and Codagnone (Hardcover)

For the past 10 years, John Lovett and Alessandro Codagnone have been working collaboratively as Lovett/Codagnone. Their performance work and video installations explore power relations, both as manifested in explicit cultural signifiers like S/M and in clandestine or unconscious practices. Previous photography-based collaborations displaced gay subcultural signifiers into suburban environments or urban public spaces. In more recent works, the audience is confronted with an appropriation of theatrical fallout, scripted communication that makes up patterns of interaction and dysfunction within family structures. The complexity of human dynamics is explored and re-delivered, often through the distilling of a pose that demands intensity and endurance. Lovett/Codagnone's strenuous performances convey uncomfortable and complex relationships in which the only constant is ever-shifting power roles.