It’s the latest chapter in the longstanding dialogue between the Berlin-based artists and the fashion house. Though it isn’t the product of an official collaboration, the best-known artefact of Elmgreen & Dragset’s interaction with the brand is “Prada Marfa”, the permanent sculptural installation of a Prada boutique in the Texan desert. Since then, the duo has also exhibited at Fondazione Prada.

Titled “The Audience”, the immersive, transient environment created by the duo centres on a cinema auditorium installed in the space’s main hall. On its screen, a blurred-out scene loops: a fraught chamber drama depicting an interaction between a creative couple – a painter and a writer – contemplating the nuances of their practices, their testing relationship, and the shortcomings of the respective audiences, in particular their attention spans. “There is a certain moment where the writer says to the painter: ‘But the art audience isn’t the real audience!’” Michael Elmgreen laughs. “‘I read somewhere that the art audience only spends 30 seconds on average in front of an artwork. Can you imagine someone reading a book in 30 seconds? Going to the cinema to watch a movie, and leaving after only half a minute?!”

Photography Stephen James. Courtesy of Prada.

Photography Stephen James. Courtesy of Prada.

Photography Stephen James. Courtesy of Prada.

Photography Stephen James. Courtesy of Prada.

While the film itself unfolds somewhere between abstract expressionist tableau and a streamed video rendered over a poor connection, the pair’s dialogue can be clearly heard, diffusing focus away from any direct relationship between sound and image and onto the surrounding space – in particular the chartreuse velvet chairs (identical to those found in the Fondazione Prada cinema in Milan), and the spectators sitting in them. Adding to the faint surreality and obscurity of the whole affair is the fact that a number of those spectators aren’t actually real – rather, they’re hyperrealistic sculptural figures, which only enhance the sense that you’ve crept into a screening late, and are tiptoeing past silent, glaring onlookers to find your seat.

“So many of our installations have been dealing with audience movements or interactions in different institutional spaces, and for this particular installation, we have kind of reversed the roles of the components of a cinema,” Ingar Dragset shares. “What you see is a completely blurred scene that looks like or seems like it’s taken out of a feature movie, but it’s looped in a way that you can’t quite tell when it begins or ends.”

Photography Stephen James. Courtesy of Prada.