Appliance (2024) was written and directed by Olivia Erlanger. Its protagonist Sophie has just moved into a new house but, in her isolation, begins to hear strange noises and experience visual distortions. The psychic Crystal and her daughter Maya arrive to investigate what is disturbing Sophie’s space: is this all a product of Sophie’s mind or is there an external agent? Using tropes of horror and sci-fi, the film draws on the artist’s research into the history and cultural significance of domestic appliances, such as the oven, with a focus on how metaphors for human bodily function have been applied to them. The film explores how our existence is interwoven with our built environment and proposes a non-hierarchical relationship between living and non-living objects. The video’s sound design – utilizing recordings made on set of various domestic devices – gives agency and voice to the ostensibly inert.

Appliance is executive produced by Jill Ferraro (Adaptation) and Andrea Longacre White (C’mon, C’mon), produced by Paradise Productions and Ani Schroeter (This Closeness), shot by Mia Cioffi Henry (Invisible Beauty), and stars Callie Hernandez and Sasha Frolova.

Biography

Olivia Erlanger (b. 1990, New York) lives and works in New York. Through her sculpture, writing, and filmmaking, Erlanger explores American dreams and delusions. Recent and forthcoming solo and two-person exhibitions include If Today Were Tomorrow at Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (2024); Humour in the Water Coolant at ICA London (2024); Appliance at Kunstverein Gartenhaus, Vienna (2022); Home is a Body at Soft Opening, London (2020); Split-level Paradise at Bel Ami, Los Angeles (2020); Ida at Motherculture, Los Angeles (2018); Poison Remedy Scapegoat at Human Resources, Los Angeles (2018); and mouths filled with pollen at And Now, Dallas (2018). Notable group exhibitions include Nonmemory at Hauser Wirth, Los Angeles (2023); Dream Journal at Company Gallery, New York (2023); On Failure, at Soft Opening, London (2023); The Heavy Light Show at Night Gallery, Los Angeles (2022); Shell at Del Vaz Projects, Los Angeles (2022); The Kick Inside at Museum X, Shanghai (2022); Liquid Life at Kistefos Museum, Jevnaker (2021); Psychosomatic at Various Small Fires, Los Angeles (2021); In Situ at Marianne Boesky, New York (2021); Winterfest at Aspen Art Museum, Aspen (2020); Haunted Haus at Swiss Institute, New York (2020); DIS Presents: What do people do all day? at Kunsthalle Charlottenborg, Copenhagen (2020); No Space, Just a Place at Daelim Museum, Seoul (2020); and For a Dreamer of Houses at Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas (2020).

Erlanger is the author of Appliance (Wild Seeds, 2022) and, with architect Luis Ortega Govela, the  co-author of Garage (MIT Press, 2018). Her writing has appeared in publications including Tank Magazine, PIN UP, Flash Art, and Harvard Design Magazine, and a forthcoming catalog essay through Spector Books in 2024. Erlanger’s work is in the collection of the Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, Texas; KADIST, San Francisco, California; X Museum, Shanghai, China; among others.