Ed Atkins & Patrick Ward: Defining Holes
May 31. 2012 - July 22. 2012 (7pm) 0:
Defining Holes plots the various nothings that exist between and within moving image. Using stock footage, youtube esoterica, genre cinema, original HD video, stirring music and conspicuous sound design, 'Defining Holes' will compel itself and the viewer into affective coincidence. A conversation will be conducted concerning holes – but spoken in a peculiar vernacular: gaping vowels, narrow full stops and petering ellipses;intrusions, extrusions, and vast dilations.
Ontologically speaking, holes present a quandary: do they exist or not? As a noun, they are defined as such; their existence is at least nominal. Materially however, that which surrounds them – the things from which their presence predicates absence – always-already determine the presence of holes. The notion of a sovereign hole might be better understood as simply nothing. In order to recognise a hole as such, there needs to be a something for the hole to interpolate.
A hole is a parasite from the void: a negatively charged paradox whose nominal existence disguises an essential un-being. This apparently palliative dissimulation – the appearance of presence to veil desperate absence – might be understood as a harmless reparative if it weren’t so manifestly dangerous to confuse nothing with something.
Within the moving image, holes define the presence of the medium. Those dividing lines that lie abyssal between every discrete frame can only be traversed via an illusionary bridge: the persistence of vision. This impression of movement is an analgesic of ideological potential. A shot of a spot-lit coin-toss before that unblinking void.
Where film is materially discrete – each image a fragment divided from its intimates by a runnel of nothing – analogic video constructs its images in perpetuity: through the incessant sequential scanning of light-sensitive phosphors, the image is never fully present, either spatially or temporally. The nothing and the something confuse – or rather, the nothing’s boudaries begin to bleed – encroaching upon the something, upon the image. Here as everywhere else, no thing has nothing to lose.
(Each of those attenuated black lines incising the reel of film is the same attenuated black line: a single, fifty kilometre long tendril of the void threading its way between the images. And that long shadow lurking within the VHS copy film noir is a mere stooge for the blind eyeball of a TV on standby)
Digital video is something else, of course. The appearance of movement is no longer predicated on the recurrence of absence. – It is not predicated on recurrence at all: there is simply no movement because there is no matter. The digital is entirely hole. Defined by its own dreamed-of, vacated representations.
Ed Atkins & Patrick Ward
Events:
Saturday, 2 June
12 (noon)
In conversation
Ed Atkins and Patrick Ward talk about their new work at CC Tobačna 001.
Tuesday, 19 June
5 pm
Artist talk: Patrick Ward
Patrick Ward presents an illustrated overview of his practice followed by a conversation with Dražen Dragojević.
Ed Atkins was born in 1982, in the United Kingdom. He works predominantly in high-definition video, drawing and writing to explore thoughts around materiality and corporeality. Recent solo projects include Tate Britain and Cabinet Gallery, both London, 2011; recent group exhibitions include 'A Dying Artist', ICA, London (2011), 'Time Again', Sculpture Center, New York (2011), 'An Echo Button', with James Richards and Haroon Mirza, for Performa 2011, and 'Weighted Words' at 176, London (2012). He was shortlisted for the Jarman Award, 2011 and is the winner of the inaugural 'Tomorrow Never Knows' Film and Video Umbrella film commission. In 2012 he will present solo projects at Chisenhale Gallery, London, Bonn Kunstverein and Isabella Bortolozzi Galerie, Berlin.
Patrick Ward was born 1977, in the United Kingdom. His practice incorporates video, photography, sound and text, to explore the legacy of 20th century models of cinematic narrative and contemporary modes of attention, documentation, distribution and re-articulation. Solo shows include Centre des arts actuels Skol (Montreal, 2011), Mala galerija, Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana, (2007). Group exhibitions include ‘Notes and Projects’, Holly Bush Gardens, London (2011), Shift Festival of Electronic Arts, Basel (2009), 28th Biennial of Graphic Arts Ljubljana (2009), ‘Subversion of Standstill’ ACC Gallery, Weimar (2008). He is a lecturer in Fine Art at Academy of Visual Arts Ljubljana.
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Tobačna Ljubljana has supported the entire Galerija 001's programme in 2012.
A hole is a parasite from the void: a negatively charged paradox whose nominal existence disguises an essential un-being. This apparently palliative dissimulation – the appearance of presence to veil desperate absence – might be understood as a harmless reparative if it weren’t so manifestly dangerous to confuse nothing with something.
Within the moving image, holes define the presence of the medium. Those dividing lines that lie abyssal between every discrete frame can only be traversed via an illusionary bridge: the persistence of vision. This impression of movement is an analgesic of ideological potential. A shot of a spot-lit coin-toss before that unblinking void.
Where film is materially discrete – each image a fragment divided from its intimates by a runnel of nothing – analogic video constructs its images in perpetuity: through the incessant sequential scanning of light-sensitive phosphors, the image is never fully present, either spatially or temporally. The nothing and the something confuse – or rather, the nothing’s boudaries begin to bleed – encroaching upon the something, upon the image. Here as everywhere else, no thing has nothing to lose.
(Each of those attenuated black lines incising the reel of film is the same attenuated black line: a single, fifty kilometre long tendril of the void threading its way between the images. And that long shadow lurking within the VHS copy film noir is a mere stooge for the blind eyeball of a TV on standby)
Digital video is something else, of course. The appearance of movement is no longer predicated on the recurrence of absence. – It is not predicated on recurrence at all: there is simply no movement because there is no matter. The digital is entirely hole. Defined by its own dreamed-of, vacated representations.
Ed Atkins & Patrick Ward
Events:
Saturday, 2 June
12 (noon)
In conversation
Ed Atkins and Patrick Ward talk about their new work at CC Tobačna 001.
Tuesday, 19 June
5 pm
Artist talk: Patrick Ward
Patrick Ward presents an illustrated overview of his practice followed by a conversation with Dražen Dragojević.
Ed Atkins was born in 1982, in the United Kingdom. He works predominantly in high-definition video, drawing and writing to explore thoughts around materiality and corporeality. Recent solo projects include Tate Britain and Cabinet Gallery, both London, 2011; recent group exhibitions include 'A Dying Artist', ICA, London (2011), 'Time Again', Sculpture Center, New York (2011), 'An Echo Button', with James Richards and Haroon Mirza, for Performa 2011, and 'Weighted Words' at 176, London (2012). He was shortlisted for the Jarman Award, 2011 and is the winner of the inaugural 'Tomorrow Never Knows' Film and Video Umbrella film commission. In 2012 he will present solo projects at Chisenhale Gallery, London, Bonn Kunstverein and Isabella Bortolozzi Galerie, Berlin.
Patrick Ward was born 1977, in the United Kingdom. His practice incorporates video, photography, sound and text, to explore the legacy of 20th century models of cinematic narrative and contemporary modes of attention, documentation, distribution and re-articulation. Solo shows include Centre des arts actuels Skol (Montreal, 2011), Mala galerija, Museum of Modern Art Ljubljana, (2007). Group exhibitions include ‘Notes and Projects’, Holly Bush Gardens, London (2011), Shift Festival of Electronic Arts, Basel (2009), 28th Biennial of Graphic Arts Ljubljana (2009), ‘Subversion of Standstill’ ACC Gallery, Weimar (2008). He is a lecturer in Fine Art at Academy of Visual Arts Ljubljana.
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Tobačna Ljubljana has supported the entire Galerija 001's programme in 2012.
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