“We create illusions that visually make you question reality”

If you are interested in how we work you can read a translation of a wonderful, comprehensive article Ioan Big wrote about us in Clin D'Oeil, a Romanian pop‑culture magazine:

DAVY & KRISTIN McGUIRE: “We create illusions that visually make you question reality”

Renowned mixed reality artists, highly regarded for their immersive art, visual narratives and digital projections, Davy and Kristin McGuire (Studio McGuire) are winners of prestigious awards such as the Helpmann and Samuel Beckett Theatre Awards, and their works have been presented in nearly 40 countries, many under the auspices of events and institutions such as the Royal Shakespeare Company, Perth International Festival, the National Gallery of Singapore or The Barbican.    

Moreover, DAVY & KRISTIN McGUIRE 's installations for famous brands (Dior, Mikimoto)  have been exhibited in the great fashion capitals, Paris, London, New York and Tokyo. Combining Davy's theatrical expertise with Kristin's experience in Cirque du Soleil in a remarkably intercreative way, the two, collaborators of Ridley Scott Creative Group, create captivating visual experiences in which fairies come to life as video sculptures, paintings in the living room are animated through video-mapping, and mermaids once again populate the water of rivers, just as plates surprise us by smiling at us on the Christmas table.

With Davy and Kristin McGuire, who were invited to Romania this fall as speakers at Spotlight, the light art festival in Bucharest curated by set designer and visual artist Adrian Damian, we had a leisurely chat about their art once they had finished working on The Enchanted Garden, the immersive experience that puts the historic Chatsworth House in Derbyshire in a completely different light during the holidays this winter.

I propose that we start our dialogue from the formula “mixed reality artists” , the one by which you define yourself on your official website. From your perspective, what does mixed reality art actually mean?

Kristin : I think the main reason we decided to use this wording on the website is that we work in so many different genres and mediums, and this seemed to be the most inclusive, because we're trying to combine digital reality and physical reality.

Every few years, however, we change the way we describe ourselves and, at the moment, we simply say that we make immersive art , because it seems to better fit the nature of the projects we are involved in.

I remember that, before mixed reality, we were talking more about video-mapping, so it's possible that this with "mixed reality" will change in the coming years, because it's very difficult to find a framework that we can say characterizes us, and we've always had this problem of briefly explaining to someone what we do.

Davy : Some people are talking about light art now, but I prefer to continue to think in terms ofmixed reality, because in our art, there are different planes that intertwine, that “mix.” It can be about light, but it can also be about how we approach theater or how we sometimes go into a virtual reality, even if we don’t currently work with tools like VR, AR or 360 video cameras.

Ultimately, what we're trying to do is create different worlds or augment existing ones, especially with the help of light and video projections. In a sense, we're creating illusions that, visually, make you question reality, and that's why we're now more inclined to say that we're making immersive art, because it seems to define a little bit more clearly the way that we're constantly trying to find intercreative ways to express ourselves.

Am I to understand that, in essence, it's more about a mix of reality and fantasy than about mixing different perspectives on reality?

Kristin : Yeah, I think you summed it up well, but I would also add the combination of the physical and the digital, and the combination of different creative processes. I mean, we make things physically and we also create things digitally, and with each project that we complete, we probably gain a new ability to bring the idea that we have in mind to life, so basically everything just sits there and then evolves from a creative mix.

Davy : On the other hand, we can also look at things from the perspective of the mix of genres, because, for example, we cannot say that a theater show that we are going to stage has nothing to do with technology... yes, it does, because we play a lot with lighting effects, but we do not resort to digital, being a scenography conceived rather in a traditional manner, specific to a theatrical production.

In your opinion, is creativity a gift you have naturally or a quality that can be acquired throughout life?

 Kristin : It's funny, because I think we're both creative people to some extent, and as a result, it's really hard for us to imagine that someone might not be creative. People often ask us, 'Where do ideas come from? ' or ' Is it hard to have ideas? ' and we always say, ' Having ideas is the easy part. The hard part is putting them into practice. '

It's very hard for me to imagine a person lacking creativity, so, honestly, I've never thought about this topic long enough to form an opinion, especially since we can talk a lot about creativity including in the case of engineers, for example, so, in my opinion, this is not just a characteristic of artists.

Davy : In the end, it all comes down to problem solving… maybe that's the point. And we artists create our own problems to solve, while engineers solve real problems, like getting water from here to there.

Beyond that, I think it depends a lot on the meaning we give to creativity, especially since there is an extraordinary amount of art being made, in a range of forms of expression that is difficult to comprehend. There is nothing malicious about what I am going to say now, but sometimes you come across people who, artistically, have found an area in which they excel or are successful and then they keep that direction, they stay there, and then I can't help but think the following:

It's really cool what they're doing, but is it as creative as when someone comes up with a new idea or invents something new?'. I know a few artists, for example, who just draw birds... that's all they do, they draw birds. Well, is that a real manifestation of creativity or is it something - dare I say - almost stereotypical? Because it can be just therapeutic or just enjoyable, but not necessarily creative.

Let's talk about creativity in a particular case, because at Chatsworth you can experience The Enchanted Garden these days , where not only have you intervened on the historical architecture through video-mapping, but you have also created some holographic fairies. What would you say to convince me to go to Derbyshire for Christmas?

Davy : It would be very difficult for me to personally convince you to do that, because what I created there was mostly in accordance with the brief I received, meaning it fit very well with someone else's idea, and as a result, I feel like we don't have the same sense of ownership over that experience that we do with other works.

To recommend you go there, I would actually have to resort to arguments that have little to do with our work, in the sense that the history of the building, so the building itself and the artworks it houses are really amazing, plus there are many other artists and companies that have contributed to this Christmas experience. So, I think there are many things to see there, not just what we have prepared.

On balance, it seems to me that the creative challenges were much more substantial last year with Mischief at the Mansio , the Christmas experience at Harewood House…

Kristin : Yes, absolutely. But speaking of both projects, the creative challenge is always a beautiful one when you work with a heritage building, because these historic buildings are so architecturally complete in themselves, designed down to the smallest detail by amazingly talented people, that, in any room you enter, at first glance you have the feeling that there is nothing you can add to make it more interesting or more beautiful… and then the question is what do you do to avoid filling that building with things that, in fact, do not enhance its harmony or beauty?

That's why, in terms of Harewood House, it was interesting for us that the audience enters those rooms and discovers what we were able to animate through immersive video projections.

In other words, our approach started from how we can make what already exists tell a story, come to life, but without overlapping what it transmits as such and without introducing too many new elements into the space.

That's why I say it's a really nice challenge, because you look, for example, at the chairs piled up somewhere in the attic or the ones beautifully displayed in a hall or another and you think... how do they feel like that, stacked or displayed? What would they tell the audience about who sat on them for a hundred years, who farted on them, what those people's butts look like or who pressed them harder because they were chubbier? In general, what stories could an object in that building tell?

It challenged us to create and see how we could tell a story without resorting to things that don't belong in the house or that don't fit the harmony of its design. It's like you have to think, think, and keep thinking until you come to the conclusion that... ' Yes, this could work! ' and I think that in creating this experience we started mainly from the human tendency to anthropomorphize everything.

As soon as we see a face somewhere, we attribute certain character traits to it, just as, in religions like Shinto, we see spirits in things… I think that's what we did with Harewood House, because we animated the paintings and gave life to objects, not just statues, but also tableware, for example, making the plates smile and talk.

That was the artistic challenge, but there is always the logistical one, because you can't fix a video projector support to a heritage building wall as you feel the need... sometimes these kinds of technical challenges arise, which are also quite interesting to solve.

You had another site-specific immersive projection experiment in your portfolio, A Night at the Mansion, from 2019, for which you won the 'Innovation of the Year' award at the Museum + Heritage Awards. How do you resist the temptation to use already validated recipes and are you always looking to come up with something new? What is the fuel for your creative engine?

Kristin : I think it's curiosity, I mean we both have an innate curiosity. If we were to go back to Harewood House, which we'll be back to next year, I think the idea of ​​doing the same thing wouldn't seem right to us at all.

So, I think that for us there is more of an approach like… to work creatively with some components that we have developed, because that gives us a bit of security and peace of mind, knowing that they will work – because they will be familiar to the viewer - but, on the other hand, we feel that we have to propose to a large extent – ​​maybe even half of the entire experience – something new and surprising, that will satisfy both the audience and our own curiosity.

I think there's a natural desire in us to explore different parts of the building every time, and what's nice about Harewood House is that the space is basically entrusted to us as a playground for our imagination, meaning they have a lot of trust in us, compared to Chatsworth, where it's a much larger audience, a new team, and the rules are much stricter about what we can do. At Harewood we can take risks because they let us play and then we see that as an opportunity to develop new ideas.

Davy : For me, I get really depressed if I'm not creating new things. It just really bugs me when that happens, I mean it really bothers me that I'm getting into a rut, and doing the same thing too much is something that inherently creates problems for me. There's always a little part of me that starts out saying, 'You're not going to be able to do that again,' and I try to get to the point where I'm like, 'Okay, let's do it again to perfect it, but then let's move on to something completely new because it's much more interesting .'

On the other hand, I think we probably become more pragmatic as we get older, and I don't necessarily mean that in a negative way. How big is the project? Can we handle it, and if so, how will we do it? What sacrifices will we have to make in relation to the effort?

All these details about time management and being realistic about what you can do with a certain budget are actually very boring things, but in the end, we take them on so we can get back to the creative game.

Are there any major changes in your artistic approach compared to 15 years ago, say, when you created the theatrical installation The Icebook, the world's first video mapping in pop-up book format, followed in 2011 by the multimedia theater performance Howl's Moving Castle ?

Kristin : I think we were much more naive and maybe a little more idealistic back then, so we were more willing to take risks and be a little bolder… which, now, seems like a not-so- safeapproach or maybe we don't have the energy anymore, I don't know, but, anyway, it's clear that we look at things with more maturity.

Over time, we have become more sensitive, but also more thoughtful, meaning we make sure that everything is done properly and we also no longer waste ourselves in endless series of sleepless nights because of projects, so we could say that we are now a bit more conservative.

Davy : I think a lot of our work has been very well received and successful, but over time there have been works that haven't been done as I think they could have been or we would have liked them to be, and the feeling you get afterwards is not a very pleasant one. Overall, I would say things have gone well for us, but on the other hand, we can't overlook these projects that have failed or haven't been done as well as others, so we try to do everything we can to mitigate that.

I, for example, try to finish my work much faster than I would have done before, because I want to make sure that everything doesn't end in a last-minute panic, and what we set out to do doesn't work.

There are a lot of things that when I was younger I would approach with more confidence, like, 'Yeah, I can do this. It's okay.', but now I realize the need for a balance between keeping that attitude, because it's a really great energy, and asking myself, ' Do I want to have a heart attack? Probably not. '.

We're staying a little on the bold side, because I have the impression that Howl's Moving Castle was a kamikaze project for you at the time, in the sense that it had a much higher degree of complexity than works like Pinboard or The Icebook. For example, how did you prepare the live interactions between the actors and the projections?

Kristin : It was extremely difficult, because at the time, what we were doing was a very unusual practice. In the world of theater, an actor would prepare to have a stage presence that would only take into account the decor and the other performers, but not for shows in which video projections played a major role, which would require him to take a step back, and this awareness did not exist at the time… in a context in which the theater producers gave us only three weeks to mount the play and, although we told them that we needed video projectors from day one, they only arrived a week before the premiere.

It was our most stressful project, as you characterized it, an absolute kamikaze project, because, as I said, at that time it was not common to work in theater with video projections, and everything happened quickly. Many of the ideas that we had literally materialized with just Davy at the computer, when it would have taken a whole visual production team to do the whole thing.

It was exactly one of those projects that brought with it a lot of negative feelings and a bunch of sleepless nights... which are part of what I was referring to just now.

Davy : Beyond that, I think it also mattered that it was a little different from everything we had done before, in the sense that Kristin and I had previously made a small show together, called Silent Movie, but which was conceptually not similar to Howl's Moving Castle, because it was essentially based very much on our own interactions with the projections, and the viewer had the feeling that we were translating what we already knew how to do, ourselves being the performers.

Obviously, being the creators of the show, we understood how to "dance" with a video projection, to interact with it, whereas in a show like Howl's Moving Castle the actors are not necessarily trained in this sense, so they are not necessarily good at what they do, and that makes the process really difficult.

Ultimately it's a pairing of different worlds, that of traditional theater, which is organized in a very structured and very creative way, but also extremely specific, and the one we come from, where the way we work is not necessarily script-based.

In other words, theater has a different procedural approach than ours and finding ways of communicating between them was difficult, and from a staging perspective, it's only along the way that you realize, regardless of which camp you belong to, that you considered at the beginning of the process that it was normal or simple for the other person to do a certain thing, but, of course... it's not like that at all.

Regarding what Kristin was saying, I really think that, personally, I took on too many responsibilities and I could have asked for support in this regard, but back then I didn't realize what it really meant to be a creative director, nor did I imagine that if I said I needed help, there would probably be someone who would try to find a way to make my job easier.

I felt like I was taking on more than was necessary, without being able to say, ' But maybe that person is better at this than me, so why should I do it? ' I just don't think I knew what my role was at the time, you know?

Yes, it was a suicide mission, because we integrated this kind of technology into rehearsals from the beginning, but, undeniably, we learned a lot from that project. Being fresh out of college, so not very experienced, when we were offered the opportunity to do this big project in London, we didn't hesitate for a moment... at that time, we were just jumping into anything.

A story can be developed visually in countless ways, thanks to the possible combinations of tools, from traditional ones – sculpture, acting, painting, papercutting – to new media. In your creative process, how is the connection made between the idea or imagined story and the forms of artistic expression?

Kristin : I guess we're quite different from a lot of people who use technology in their art, because I often get the impression that a lot of them are interested in the technology itself first and then they think about what they could do with it... maybe that's not true, but that's my impression. Instead, we always have a vision, an idea or a concept first and only then do we think about what kind of tools would be suitable to implement it in a particular system. For example, for the theater show we're working on right now, we realized that we simply don't need any technology.

Therefore, only after we have a creative idea do we ask ourselves how to put it into practice and, as a result, do we end up defining our needs and the mix of tools and technologies that would allow us to materialize it.

Then follows an iterative process that is familiar to you as an event designer, because you ask yourself the problem that, if you use a certain tool, through its limitations, it will inevitably change the initial idea, and the budget also comes into play, which, of course, influences its transposition. This is the less interesting part, but I would say that the idea always comes first and, in many situations, it appears as a consequence of the curiosity that characterizes both of us.

Regarding ideas or concepts, in a context related to your 2013 installation, The Hunter , you said that “ we produce work that is more human and nostalgic; we try and contain a traditional aesthetic and keep the magic alive ”. Why did you also introduce nostalgia into the creative equation?

Davy : It's very difficult for us to define in words what we do, because often we aim to create something funny, but sometimes states like nostalgia, sadness, melancholy, loneliness, longing arise... these sometimes come to mind when I have a moment of reflection or when I'm about to experience them, and they are actually beautiful feelings, however strange they may seem. I consider them beautiful contemplations that are part of life, but which we often want to avoid or make us feel uncomfortable.

Of course, all of this cannot adequately describe an experience like A Night at the Mansion, for example, but I think these things, sublime in a way, really inspire us. After all, humor or irony is closely related to all these feelings associated with melancholy.

If you animate a statue or a cake that tells a story about a relationship, it will implicitly contain a dose of melancholy. Basically, humor is in this case a very good way to include in the proposal we make to the audience a series of sad emotions meant to nuance the feeling of joy, but in an attenuated form, to make them more accessible and not to overwhelm the viewer.

Kristin : Of course, I wouldn't describe A Night at the Mansion as a project as a whole based on nostalgia, but there are still enough moments there that nuance the audience's experience, like the one where we made the statues remember what the sad monolith actually represented... so we incorporate such elements even when we have to create a Christmas experience. Regarding Chatsworth House, we were also very keen to make it very emotional and, for example, we had to create a spectacular projection on the facade, but the producers' request was that it be very cheerful and full of joy, and the first reaction I had to myself was... ' Oh, we can't do that! '.

For me, Christmas is primarily about peace and contemplation, so it's not just about seasonal parties, so, to be honest, I had a really hard time with this project at first, but fortunately, we're collaborating incredibly well with an extremely talented composer, to whom I told that we had to create a soundtrack that, at its core, had to be emotional.

Of course, after we sent the first sample of the music to Chatsworth House, we were again reminded that it had to be something cheerful – and more cheerful, in fact – but I kept telling the composer: 'No, we're leaving the music as it is, because when we combine it with the images, we'll get the perfect balance between a "Wow!" reaction and a tear in the corner of the eye. '.

Therefore, your observation is fair, because our creations, beyond being emotional, are also melancholic to a certain extent, even in the case of work orders that mentioned in the design brief the indication to think of something cheerful, where we always try to introduce this component and it seems that people appreciate it.

In the case of the commissions you receive, whether it's Courvoisier, Pilchuck Glass School or the Night to Light Festival in Singapore, what are the criteria based on which you decide to transform the idea from the creative brief into a work of visual art?

Davy : First of all, it's our instinct, which often reacts to the vibe of those who approach us. Sometimes you can feel whether certain people appreciate our approach, if they are truly interested or understand what we do.

Kristin : Indeed, our intuition probably plays an important role in the first phase, but otherwise, there are also quite tangible criteria. It's about how much creative freedom we have, how much or deeply the potential client knows our work and wants us for what we do really well... I think that, ultimately, these things matter.

If a company like McDonald's, let's say, comes to us and asks us to do something extremely fun very, very quickly, then we will probably only consider that proposal if it pays us extremely well, because otherwise it's not something attractive to us.

We also avoid projects that are overly collaborative, because, as you know, when too many chefs get involved in the preparation process, the resulting dish no longer represents you and you no longer feel like you are the one who created it.

But beyond anything else, we care about creative freedom the most. I get discouraged if the briefis too specific and doesn't contain anything that has a bit of humanity or that allows us to create an emotional journey, because it immediately sends me thinking about things that we don't necessarily want to do.

In terms of the ideas and stories that inspire you to develop them visually, it seems like there's a Dr. Jekyll and a Mr. Hyde side to you, because your holographic fairies juxtaposed with adark diorama like Psycho suggests a certain creative duality. How did you end up with Hitchcock, actually?

Davy : I think we were just starting to develop our paper cut technique at the time and, as such, we were working a lot with paper. Initially, we chose to build the Bates house from Psycho just as an experiment, because it was very evocative and we wanted to see how the paper lighting would work, so what the object itself would look like, and then we developed the story inside the house because it gave us the opportunity to creatively expand that exercise. As for the reason for leaving, I don't know exactly why I was drawn to that house in particular...

Kristin : I think it happened because we both love Edward Hopper and the way he tells his stories… the idea of ​​creating the Bates house was probably inspired by one of his works. In Hopper's work there is a very special isolation and loneliness of the characters, especially those women who look longingly out the window, and we really like the light he uses in those paintings, which induces the somberness you mentioned.

To summarize, the trajectory for Psycho started with Hopper as inspiration, it actually started with Davy's experiments with building shapes made of paper, after which we decided to bring the Bates house to life and we did this starting from the female body... what mattered here was the fact that I started my professional career as a dancer and played many roles of women on the verge of death along the way.

Even when I ended a first stage of my career with a master's degree, the theme was the representation of dead women in art, so you could say that I am somehow fascinated by femininity in art, more precisely by the destruction of femininity, and the woman stabbed in the shower in Psycho symbolized this idea in turn.

In other words, the desire to experiment in design, the uniqueness and evocativeness of the house's architecture, the play with light and darkness in space, the female body, violence and death as traits of humanity, all came together here in a common fascination of ours.

From an aesthetic perspective, is the fascination also shared with Noir cinema or Expressionism? Because in your works like Laundromat or Factory such influences are noticeable…

Kristin : Well, personally, I don't have a great sense of color, and I'm more fascinated by light and shadows. And because Davy is just as passionate, film noir is a constant source of inspiration, especially since the narrative themes in this cinematic space suit us very well, being psychological dramas that often don't have happy endings. Plus, the femme fatale appears there, usually associated with a tragic destiny...

Davy : …which is also a very interesting theme, because the tragedy of the femme fatale is found in a lot of plays where people tend to self-destruct, so the connections between the forms of expression are multiple. Maybe the cynicism that often manifests itself in these stories is not characteristic of us, but it is something that speaks to us a lot, because things don't always work out the way they should in everyday life and you have to overcome, to somehow get out of such situations… well, I think, in a way, there is something very beautiful in that.

Beyond emotion and aesthetics, another important feature of your visual storytelling style is that it takes the viewer outside of current time. The Telegraph, for example, characterized the live performance Vertigo, presented in 2021 at the London Mime Festival, as “a sensuous pole-dance by the former into an image of humanity moving through time and space ”. What is your perspective on time?

Davy : In a practical sense, I would always like to have more time at my disposal, and in a broader sense of our creation, due to the fact that time is one of our favorite themes, I seek to use the possibility of playing with it to make people enter a certain state, so that they live a unique experience.

On the other hand, we often use narrative as a composition of what happens over time – the evolution of a character that often leads to something terminal -, we could also look at time from the perspective of the fact that each of us's project is our life itself and, in order to end it properly, we have a deadline that we don't know... somehow, this places me as an artist in a contemplative posture.

Kristin : To give you an answer from a personal perspective, I like slowness… I like slowing people down and I think that might represent an aversion to the fast pace of the modern world.

In fact, this was also the reason why we structured our presentation in Bucharest in that way [ the approach of the talk given by Kristin & Davy McGuire at the Spotlight Festival 2025 focused on the importance of the emotional component of storytelling in the visual arts – no ], because much of the art being made today gives the feeling that it is constantly rushing us.

There are always so many amazing things to see that you don't have time to look at them all properly, and I don't like that at all, and as a result, I probably have this reaction of trying to calm people down.

Going back in time, you met when you, Davy, were a student of Theatre and Kristin was a student of Dance. How did the radical change in focus from body performance to multimedia design come about?

Kristin : At university, Davy acted in his own productions and, as a result, his work involved frequent interactions with video projections, whereas for me, as a dancer, when I choreographed my own works, I had to design the lighting as well… plus, I still really enjoyed working with other artists, because it added an extra dimension to the dance, because, taken as such, it never seemed to be enough for me.

So, I think that although we both started by exploring art through our bodies in one way or another, there was an inherent interest in each of us in doing this as part of a combination involving set design, sound, and lighting.

What has been and continues to be interesting or exciting for us about the works we create on paper, for example, is that we ourselves perform in them, and this is another reason why we need to design others, because we know how to play in our own creations.

So, the desire to conceive new worlds and tell other stories is still there, unaltered, just as the performative element still remains present, but when you work for a client like Dior, you can't think about performing in your own work.

They have their models and their perfect bodies, they have their fabric manufacturers, and usually the whole thing has to be done by yesterday, so you just can't do that. In our case, that's how it's been for the last few years, and that's why we wanted to take a step back, go back to physical creation, and creatively re-enter our own skin.

Because I, honestly, think that the embodiment of melancholy, nostalgia, and loneliness is actually a very interesting physical and emotional state.

What is the explanation, however, for the persistence of your passion for exploring the creative possibilities of paper, which led you to transform simple cut-out outlines into immersive worlds, brought to life through optical illusions, projections and actors?

Davy : For me, paper is nostalgia, in the sense that paper is the thing you have at hand when you're a kid. It's one of the first materials that most kids were used to, and maybe still are, creating with, because it's very malleable, it holds light really well, and you can draw on it, so when you use it as an adult, it comes with a feeling that reminds you of childhood.

Kristin : For me, paper has a fragility, purity and delicacy, traits that I love very much and that I think are found in almost all of our narratives. As I said, we want to work more with paper again, because the combination of physical and digital remains our strength, our USP, but also our passion… in a world that is becoming increasingly dominated by AI.

We've been focusing a bit too much on producing digital materials in recent years and as a result we've been widowed from the part of being involved in creating the physical environment, and we've realized that we're missing that very, very much. So we want to get back to things like this, but the problem is that projects like this take a lot of time... this time that we keep talking about and which turns out to be extremely short in this regard.

For us, paper is a perfect medium for storytelling, as it gives us a pristine white surface that we can shape in a multitude of ways. Moreover, given that our stories are infused to a great extent with melancholy and fragility, as a medium, paper works well because, as Davy says, it already carries with it a certain nostalgia, but unfortunately it is becoming less and less relevant in the digital world, given the fact that it has a limited lifespan.

On the other hand, you collaborate with Ridley Scott Creative Group, so you are also connected to cinema, a form of expression always open to creating new worlds. Wasn't there a temptation to experiment in that direction as well?

Davy : Of course, film set design could be an interesting direction to explore and there is even the possibility of having a few projects in this area in the future, but I think it has to be something that suits us very well, because I would like to feel like I am doing something more at our own behest than at the behest of a director.

To be completely honest, I would rather build a world myself and then decide what the story in that world is.

And you, Kristin, what world do you dream of in 2026?

Kristin : I would like to do a work on a different scale of Micropolis [the public installation presented by Davy & Kristin McGuire as part of Hull UK City of Culture 2017], but made of white paper, and the stories in it would be vignettes of silhouettes of lonely people, appearing within the illuminated windows.

In modern metropolises, people feel increasingly lonely, and I would like to express this somehow in an immaculate and detailed way, using only white paper and black-and-white projections.

Interview by IOAN BIG