Kirsten Pieroth’s boiled and bottled copies of The New York Times, in her Conservation Piece (2010) in The Biography of Things, embody this material and relational perspective. The viewer is presented with a deconstructed language through physical reorganisation of the newspaper. Laid out like a school science experiment, the social and symbolic power of The […]
Whilst outwardly concerned with typologies of contemporary kitsch, Peoples’ practice is actually based in extensive research. He has racked up hours studying local history in the Belgrave Library, and even more on the internet, piecing together information about local alien and UFO sightings. The most famous local UFO sighting, indeed one of the most renowned […]
Sophia Dacy-Cole interviews artist and theorist Erin Manning on her keynote ‘For a Pragmatics of the Useless’ at the Transversal Matters conference, Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, September 2015. SDC : un 10.1 focuses on Russian theorist Boris Aratov’s concept of the co-worker: the idea that objects are not merely inert, but have some […]
Spooky Action at a Distance at Bus Projects, 9–30 January 2016 Amalie Smith, Amitai Romm, David Stjernholm, Rasmus Myrup, Valérie Collart and curated by Nanna Stjernholm Jepsen The polar icecaps have melted and Bus Projects finds itself submerged in the underwater world of Spooky Action at a Distance. This exhibition is the second, return iteration […]
Rapa Nui Ranelagh (2015), exhibited at West Space in October last year, marks a shift towards something softer and more forgiving. The work is based around a perfectly made, over-sized plinth-like table structure, which runs along the entire main wall of the large gallery, and whose seven, unevenly-spaced leg-sections are in keeping with lines drawn […]
In the tradition of OSW, the exhibition was comprised of a range of events, sculptural installations, performances and outdoor works that unravelled over various locations and times and was almost impossible to take in in its entirety. This curatorial approach encouraged recurring visits to the show, hunting for works across the Convent’s grounds and to […]
To be con-temporary does not necessarily mean to be present, to be here-and-now; it means to be ‘with time’ rather than ‘in time’… To be con-temporary … can thus be understood as being a comrade of time.[^1] — Boris Groys In his 1925 essay ‘Everyday Life and the Culture of the Thing (Towards a Formulation […]
In history as in nature, decay is the laboratory of life. — Karl Marx 124,908 took place in the city of Rustavi, Georgia, as part of the 2nd Tbilisi Triennial: ‘Self-Organised Systems’. The title of the show expanded the threads of Lucy R Lippard’s ‘numbers shows’. Curator Tara McDowell and host, Galaqtion Eristavi (of Georgian […]
[^1] There was a sense of urgency to communicate with the objects before our time was up. I had to let them know we are still out here, waiting for them, remembering them; that they weren’t forgotten. — Julie Gough, Trawlwoolway artist, 2015.[^2] The title of Soviet writer Sergei Tretyakov’s 1929 essay ‘The Biography of […]
Only he can see the whole, he says, because he can see there is no whole — Lázló Krasznahorkai, The Melancholy of Resistance.[^1] Moss is hard to draw. I’m sitting in the garden of a small temple on the outskirts of Kyoto. In front of me is a thick carpet of moss, only occasionally pierced […]
Imagine yourself strolling into a gallery. You pause at the entry to read the introductory wall text but find yourself struggling to see much over the shoulders of other patrons. Rather than stand on tiptoes, you use your phone to scan the QR code pasted on the wall. You are instantly taken to a page […]
What is immediately striking about Boris Arvatov’s co-worker theory lies in a social reconfiguration of the relationship to the object; rather than urging a slowing or cessation of commercial production, Arvatov advocates for relationships with the material that are meaningful and productive. Where Arvatov sees the saturation of ‘thing’ as a ground for contemplation and […]
A thin veneer of immediate reality is spread over natural and artificial matter, and whoever wishes to remain in the now, with the now, on the now, should please not break its tension film. Otherwise the inexperienced miracle-worker will find himself no longer walking on water but descending upright among staring fish. — Vladimir Nabokov, […]
Meret Oppenheim made her furry-lined teacup on a whim. She made it quickly when she was young, then she spent a large part of the rest of her career trying to replicate its triumph. She was forever a slave to that early object’s success. We saw David Byrne sing Burning Down the House some years […]
Shelley McSpedden & Meredith Turnbull : Russian Constructivist theorist, Boris Arvatov, promoted the potential of ‘things’ to act as dynamic agents for social and political change. Does such a model of objects have relevance to the work that you do? Tahjee Moar : Boris Arvatov’s notion of ‘co-worker’ and the potential of ‘things’ to act […]
identity politics One of the most important things that identity politics has taught us is that the distinction between being and doing is fraught. To think you have to perform an action. To perform an action you have to discard frivolity and set yourself on solid ground. Discourses of violence are inextricable from the subjects […]
I am selfish and so is everyone else under capitalism who can afford an iPhone. Men like to talk about surveillance as if it is the state. Women take photos of themselves. A famous woman selling herself is the archetype of us all. Selfish, Kim Kardashian West’s book of selfies taken over her lifetime, induces […]
Consider the out-of-focus faces in the background of a crowd scene. Outnumbering the key players twenty to one, they go unseen and unannounced. What would it mean to adjust the depth of field and throw the background actors into sharp relief? My line of inquiry is concerned with the possibility of using inconspicuousness as a […]