Daria Martin uses the medium of film to reveal and explore thematic polarities, to make explicit the artifice behind the lrycism and seduction created by her work. Reality versus illusion, stasis versus movement, modernity and romanticism are just some of the tensions explored in her work. Her film making is a purposeful mix of the sophisticated and the crude. Drawing on a rich source of philosophical and artistic theory while eschewing technological advances, her films aim to overtly seduce the viewer into a dreamy 'virtual reality'. Loneliness and the Modern Pentathlon examines twentieth-century avant-garde ideals via an arcane Olympic sport, the modern pentathlon, an anachronistic, but still surviving event comprised of running, swimming, shooting, horseback riding and fencing. Tensions between aspiration and exhaustion, between forward-looking modernity and romanticism and between artifice and expression are heightened and unravelled in this many-layered film, which stars British New Wave cinema icon Rita Tushingham and features a dreamlike soundtrack by acclaimed experimental New York-based harpist Zeena Parkins.

Electra acted as music consultants and paired Martin with Zeena Parkins as a composer for Loneliness And The Modern Pentathlon. An accordionist, harpist, composer and improvisor, Parkins has also extended the language of the acoustic harp with the inventive use of unusual playing techniques, preparations, and layers of digital and analog processing. Parkins makes use of anything within reach as a possible tool with which she can enhance the sonic capabilities of her harps. She thinks of her harp as a ‘sound machine of limitless capacity’ and has used household objects and hardware store finds, including alligator clips, nails, rubber erasers, rubber tubing, felt, bows, metal candy lids, hair clips, glass jars, discarded strings, as well as more conventional leslie cabinets and guitar pedals to explore her instrument.

Regeneration is a newly commissioned collaborative performance and installation by Zeena Parkins and Daria Martin. Regeneration features Parkins’s new composition, alongside a set piece and slide show created by artist Martin. The performance's visual components refer back to the film, Loneliness And The Modern Pentathlon, remixing and reinventing its fictional world, investigating its dark underbelly and delving into the world of the night.