KRIS & WILL’S VIDEOS WILL PRESENTED BY HEADMASTER AND THE BROWN ARTS INSTITUTE LIVE AT THE PERRY AND MARTY GRANOFF CENTER FOR THE CREATIVE ARTS, BROWN UNIVERSITY. OCTOBER 7 – 15, 2021.

Kris Harzinski & Will Haughery

synesthesia

For Headmaster No. 9, Pennsylvania-based artists Kris Harzinski & Will Haughery were given the topic of synæsthesia, a word deriving from the Greek for “joined sensations.” It’s the involuntary reaction in which someone responds automatically to a sensory stimulus with a steady response, like hearing a color or smelling a certain number. The number of people with synæsthesia could be as few as 1 in 200,000 or as many as 1 in 200, based on different estimates. The artists were given an assignment to produce a series of short videos exploring the concept of synæsthesia. 

The five videos in this series were created in June 2020 on the roof of Will Haughery’s studio in Philadelphia. Created in one day, the simple gestures in the five videos were an attempt to recreate joy during a particularly unstable time. The titles refer to the seemingly arbitrary naming conventions used by sports beverage companies to market their highly artificial products. 

By literally surrendering inherent differences, Kris Harzinski and Will Haughery spontaneously experiment with power and compliance, upending the notion of bromance and other normative constructs. Will is a furniture designer and maintains a painting practice in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Kris collects hand-drawn maps for the Hand Drawn Map Association, an archive he founded in 2008, and creates LGBTQ+ zines and ephemera with his project Daily Life Storage.