Cloud Cuckoo Land (2008)
is a collaborative video and sculptural installation by Erik
Moskowitz and Amanda Trager. The lead roles are played by Moskowitz and
Trager with Joan Jonas, Robert Janitz, and Ronnie Bass featured in the supporting
cast.
The title of the piece, Cloud Cuckoo Land is taken from the Aristophanes’
play The Birds, which first put the possibility of progress (and the goal of
Utopia) into doubt. The narrative encompasses a family’s move to a contemporary,
progressive commune in which the central character is confronted by her own
intolerance and inability to let go of the conventions of individualized life.
The familiar boundaries to which she clings and the unclear spatial relations
within the gallery coalesce and call into question how we envision comfort and
safety both societally and psychologically.
In creating the work, these boundaries were actively tested by the artists.
Trager and Moskowitz, themselves a couple, shared their home/studio with co-performer
Robert Janitz during the period of time in which they developed this piece.
Artifacts of this living arrangement, redolent of the mundane tensions of an
unconventional “family-life” remain in the installation, functioning
as a nearly hidden narrative-within-a-narrative. These artifacts of a lived
experience make Cloud Cuckoo Land as authentic as it is critical.