Madison Bycroft
The Sauce of All Order (Ius Cenae) (2024)
Trailer
Courtesy of the artist
Augury was one of antiquity’s most elusive political-religious traditions. In Rome, important decisions were left to the elite college of augurs, a group of priests that would interpret atmospheric phenomena and especially the flight and pecking patterns of birds and report their findings to the state. Misinterpretation was frequent and often purposeful.
Madison Bycroft’s new film stages a queer and anachronistic version of this tradition. It tells the story of Felix, an augur at the court of Nero on the verge of entering the college. Set around an extravagant ceremonial dinner party, with scenes of excessive consumption, the film looks at the internal workings of lies and artifice in relation to self-representation. Playing with the inherently fictitious and constructed nature of rituals, codes, and myths, Bycroft celebrates inauthenticity, deceit, and uncertainty as forms for countering a politics based on the idea of the authentic, on natural, given, and fixed identities.
Madison Bycroft (1987, Adelaide/Tarntanya, Australia) is an artist working with video, sculpture, and performance. They are currently dealing with forms of reading and writing, expression and refusal, exploring the politics of illegibility and legibility through language and material. Their work has been shown in Beirut, Singapore, New York, Paris, Basel, and Córdoba, among other places. In 2023–24, they were a fellow at the Villa Medici. Bycroft lives in Marseille.
Commissioned by steirischer herbst ’24
Coproduced by steirischer herbst ’24 and the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici
With thanks to Triangle-Astérides, Marseille, as well as SISSI Club
4K video, 5.1 surround sound, 33 min.
Commissioned by steirischer herbst ’24
Coproduced by steirischer herbst ’24 and the French Academy in Rome – Villa Medici
With thanks to Triangle-Astérides, Marseille, as well as SISSI Club
