Delights of an Undirected Mind

A girl sucking her thumb into a threshold between sleep and wake, the silk-robed elephant who tucks her in; the pile of ribboned presents, a toreador preparing for cursory duels, his huge bulge spelling out the objective and feeling out the mind’s recesses in Nathalie Djurberg and Hans Berg’s teen bedroom Bacchanal. The girl moves according to the distended time of dreams procuring pastel pal after another. It suggests that the subconscious craves the kind of chaos that apparently only barbotine sex can provide. In these Delights of an Undirected Mind (2016,) a giraffe soon sits atop a petrified fox like a Hag or succubus making haunted advances, whilst dearest My Little Pony is groomed with an increasingly lewd touch. As a Wolf in Grandma’s clothing feeds the troupe milk from a nippled bottle—think Little Red Riding Ho’—both the film and the milk condense the quiet purity of babyish slumber into an eddying fantasy. Credit: Sabrina Tarasoff