Assembly#6: Text
BLOCassembly#6: TEXT
Friday 27 April 7-9pm
For the sixth BLOCassembly, artists were invited to show new or experimental ideas, or work in progress, on the theme ‘text.’
Featured artists:
Anachron-Gen
Liz Allen
Helen Blejerman
Darren Bowers
Beat Brogle & Phlippe Zimmerman
Chris Henry Clarke
Jerome Harrington
No Fixed Abode
Philip Henerson
Link to image archive (flickr.com)
ANACHRON-GEN
And Finally…
Billboard (on Eyre Lane)
LIZ ALLEN
Believing in Yourself is Misdirected
Mixed media
Examining the influence of self-help culture the artist deconstructs saturated language to create new intentions and motivations for the viewer. Through misinterpreting speech and dialogue, Allen provokes alternate ways of thinking whilst also questioning the original mediation of the source. With an interest in linguistic constructs, Allen often works across mediums to select, weight, and manipulate parts of speech that are often left unheard or unsaid within the everyday arena.
HELEN BLEJERMAN
Time is forever, not you not me
DV projection, 3 minutes looped
“The seek of The Present is not the search of terrestrial heaven nor of the endless infinity: is the investigation of the real reality” Octavio Paz (Literature Nobel prize)
“The strength of this work/projection lies in the non-chronological, never ended and prolonged instant that shows the ‘here and now’. Through the abrupt repetition of concepts like, short, momentary, whole, complete, incomplete, impermanent, etc., I wanted to explore and recognize the experience that connect us to the continuity of the intimate moment.”
DARREN BOWERS
Slut Wife
Mixed Media
For the past 3/4 years Darren Bowers has been corresponding with a self-titled Slut wife, whose adverts in the magazines he has found to be routinely the most sexually explicit and extreme (although her regular letters are elegant and literate). Here he presents her entire first advert that first engaged his interest, on a single sheet of wallpaper.
“I use contact magazines as a source material, and the text in this instance was selected from real adverts where people advertise for sexual partners. Taken out of context, they have been a surprising range of emotions that these snippets can evoke, from laughter to sadness to pity. The text was screenprinted onto wallpaper to give each work a domestic setting that went some way to describe the environment in which each accompanying photograph of the participant took place.”
BEAT BROGLE & PHILIPPE ZIMMERMANN
One Word Movie
Internet animation
(Courtyard screen)
One Word Movie is an online platform which organises, based on user-supplied terms, the flood of images on the internet into an animated film. A word turns into images, images turn into a movie.
This project plays with the tension between on-line and cinematic approaches to images. What images are associated with what words? One Word Movie reveals a glimpse into the ‘collective psychology’ of online cultures by showing patterns of word-image associations, as created by millions of people around the world.
Add words to the clipboard list and they will be generated by the piece during the evening.
CHRIS HENRY CLARKE
Drawing
A pencil drawn poster design for the latest, language themed, issue of Sheffield zine NON.
JEROME HARRINGTON
Digital image
I am currently working on some drawings which are proposals for sculptures. The drawings depict large constructed words, which with the addition of handles suggest a functional propose. The drawings are presented in the format of a poster.
The drawings are made in Photoshop. To make them I am photographing components (usually pieces of wood) and using these elements to ‘construct’ or to ‘build’ the proposed sculpture. Despite being a virtual image I am attempting to obey the same procedures or methods used to construct a wooden sculpture in reality.
NO FIXED ABODE (TERRY SLATER & HORATIO EASTWOOD)
Modern Times
Mobile Cinema
(Courtyard)
In response to the theme of text, No Fixed Abode will be using a mobile cinema to screen sections of Charlie Chaplin’s last silent film Modern Times. Chaplin plays a tramp struggling to survive in the modern, industrialised world of 1936. Preparations for the film as his first ‘talkie’ were undertaken, and went as far as writing a dialogue and experimenting with some sound scenes. However, these attempts were soon abandoned, reverting to a silent format with synchronized sound effects. The only attainable dialogue in the film is in the text screens that direct and narrate the action throughout. Notably though, this is the only film in which Chaplin’s voice is ever heard, singing pseudo-Italian gibberish. Through the artists’ intervention within this, a new text body will be offered throughout the film, with reflections on the political undercurrents which it holds and how these may translate today.
PHILLIP HENDERSON
Performance at 20.50hrs
http://www.myspace.com/philliphenderson
Phillip spent nearly four years building the time machine. On the first test-run his body disappeared when he realised that the machine is only capable of visiting temporal parts that are yet to happen, i.e. ‘in the future’. He is now delivering a series of talks that explain the method employed by this fleshy machine. During forthcoming lectures Phillip plans to demonstrate the simultaneous use of numerous temporal parts.
Phil specialises in installation, performance and sonic art. He is a composer, performer and publisher of original music. He is currently recording an audio definition of repetition and researching drones and drone dissonance. Phillip was a co-founder of the Nottingham group, Reactor.
