Sandrine Deumier & Roseminna Watson  — Les Unités-Mixtes
Reviewed by Lauren Levato Coyne

What is the simulation and are we in it? It’s an ongoing question since at least 2003 when Nick Bostrom investigated the idea in The Philosophical Quarterly (it goes back much further if the stoned armchair philosophers of the 20th century count toward the query). Les Unités-Mixtes by Sandrine Deumier and Roseminna Watson continues to ask the question via an animated short of three digital mannequins. I say mannequins because that’s the aesthetic — a hairless human with big eyes and a mouth but otherwise formless. No gender markers, no scars, no melanin, etc. On a tablet, the three are watching another mannequin interact with generic nature-forms. Maybe it’s a flower, maybe it’s a virus, maybe it’s a shrub. It’s a nature-mannequin counterpart to the human-mannequin. The being-watched mannequin observes, marvels, and falls into these shape-shifting nature mannequins. And then one of the watching-mannequins becomes aware that we are watching them. Enter the Hawthorne effect, when behaviors are changed or adjusted once the subject becomes aware they are being observed. It’s an interesting phenomena, and this moment in the video made me acutely aware of myself, implying that yes I’m in the simulation and there’s a camera watching me from behind. I’m also not sure this is what the artists intended with their video. The title, effectively mixed units, along with the being-watched mannequin falling into and out of the nature mannequins makes me think of an intersectionality with other beings. But the thought didn’t linger, it got lost in the simulation.