Banner Repeater

Double y/our money: the 2017 Banner Repeater Fundraiser begins Oct 17

17 October 2017

The Double y/our Money fundraiser at London’s Banner Repeater begins October 17 on the Local Giving Foundation website.

Each donation will receive a raffle ticket for a prize draw at London’s Somerset House Studios on November 8. The event will include work by Yuri Pattison, Jenna Sutela, Melanie Jackson, Zarina Muhammad and Anne de Boer among others, and will also feature live performances from Benedict Drew and Chooc Ly Tan.

Opened in 2009 by Ami Clarke, the artist-led space is a non-profit experimental project space with an ethos of how these spaces  “play an essential role in the vitality and economy of the art world, offering alternative opportunities for emerging and established artists alike, to produce work that might struggle to appear elsewhere.”

The fundraiser will support Banner Repeater’s upcoming year in the commission of new work, publishing and performance, as well as talks and discussions.

Visit the Banner Repeater website for details.**

win: special edition of Orgs, by Jenna Sutela (ed of 30) wrapped in silver foil with a piece of slime mould sclerotium inside

 

  share news item

Jenna Sutela’s experimental survey of decentralised organisms + organisations in Orgs launches at Banner Repeater, Aug 4

1 August 2017

Jenna Sutela is launching the Orgs: From Slime Mold to Silicon Valley publication at London’s Banner Repeater on August 4.

The evening will include a performance by the artist, who will read transcripts from the text, alongside the slime mould accompanying the launch, who goes by the name ‘Physarum Polycephalum.’ Expanding on the Sutela’s practice and work, the book is an “experimental survey of decentralised organisms and organisations drawing on several perspectives and presenting a constellation of different voices.”

Published by Garret Publications, the collected material includes contributions by Berlin-based writer Elvia Wilk, who researches the ethics of art-making, as well as Mike Pepi, Dennis Bray, Aslak Aamot Kjærulff, Chus Martínez, Venkatesh Rao, and more. There is also a ‘rare excerpt’ of Japanese manga author Shigeru Mizuki‘s ‘Neko-Gusu’ published in English for the first time.

Visit the Banner Repeater website for details.**

  share news item

Books are forever: the evolution of the printed word + 10 good reasons we should cherish its publishers

11 July 2017

There’s much to be said for the benefits of a book. A text’s existence in print-form — with pages bound and covered — belies a level of investment unmatched by a lot of what’s written for the internet. More often than not, a contemporary writer with an online audience must be their own editor, sub-editor and proofer, in a rapid-turnover environment taken from a vast, though shallow pool of information that can go unchecked and unverified, ideas with no room to develop and even fewer resources to develop them. Books have the benefit of time.

Sleep Cures Sleepiness, pub. TLTRPreß, May, 2014.

Costly and all-consuming, there’s a level of care that it takes to produce a book and a measure of multi-sensory experience it takes to absorb one. Smell, touch and movement all play a part in how printed matter is read that influences the way it’s received. Margins, typeface and stock effect the way its transmitted. While there so much potential for the rate at which ideas circulate and the diversity of voices that are heard in the contemporary milieu of networked information, there is also a place for the book.

To celebrate the launch of multilingual artist and writer Hanne Lippard’s This Embodiment at Berlin’s Broken Dimanche Press on July 13, we’ve taken a moment to highlight some worthy publishers and the books that we like below:  

Broken Dimanche

Broken Dimanche Press is a Berlin-based publishing house and exhibition space founded by John Holten and Line Madsen Simenstad with a focus on “wider discourses of contemporary art and politics.” The press also run a Para-Poetics Programme, an exhibition programme, a BDP Self Publishing Archive and preceded this upcoming Hanne Lippard publication with her first comprehensive collection of text-based works, Nuances of No, in 2013.

 

#Hanne Lippard’s ‘This Embodiment’, published March, 2017. Thank you #BrokenDimachePress 😊

A post shared by Atractivo Quenobello (@aqnb) on

Book Works

Formed in 1984, Book Works is a London-based contemporary arts organization that works to publish books by artists, as well as holding exhibitions, lectures, workshops and seminar programs. Perhaps their most well-known and successful output is their Happy Hypocrite series co-ordinated by Maria Fusco, that invites an artist to edit and curate a given issue. Past editions include Sophia Al-Maria’s ‘Fresh Hell‘ and Hannah Sawtell’s ‘#ACCUMULATOR_PLUS.’

TLTRPreß

Sleep Cures Sleepiness, pub. TLTRPreß, May, 2014.

Established in 2011, the Berlin-based press is run by artist Martin Kohout and various international collaborators and has published over “90kg of printed matter including photo albums, doubtful magazines, exhibition texts and indirect fetish catalogues.” Early interesting collections of artist’s writing include Sleep Cures Sleepiness and Linear Manual, as well as AQNB editor Jean Kay (aka Steph Kretowicz)’s Somewhere I’ve Never Been, co-published with fledgling London publisher Pool.

Montez Press

Montez Press is a publishing house based in Hamburg, New York and London and was formed in 2012. The team publish books, magazines and editorial platforms like SALT, as well as single author works by the likes of Gjergji Shkurti and Huw Lemmey. More recently they published Tomoo Arakawa’s Laugh at eXperience, a book by Julie Béna and a printed collection of online commissions from a number of artists called The Interjection Calendar. 

 

#JulieBéna’s ‘It Needed to be Tender and to be Whipped,’ published Apr, 2017. Thank you #MontezPress 😊

A post shared by Atractivo Quenobello (@aqnb) on

Sternberg Press 

Founded in 1999 by Caroline Schneider, Sternberg Press focuses on “art criticism, theory, fiction, and artists’ books” and is based between Berlin and New-York. With a focus on both the design and the editorial aspect, the press commissions and translates works within the fields of architecture, design, film, politics, literature, philosophy and contemporary art. Our recommendations include Rare Earth (2016) edited by Nadim Samman and Boris Ondreička, co-published with Vienna’s Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary and designed by AQNB’s own website designer David Rudnick as well as Jan Verwoert’s COOKIE! (2014) co-published with Piet Zwart Institute.

Rare Earth (eds Nadim Samman + Boris Ondreička). Co-published by Sternberg Press, Berlin + TBA21, Vienna.

Semiotext(e)

Co-edited by Sylvère Lotringer, Chris Kraus, and Hedi El Kholti, the press is over three decades old and is considered to be known for introducing French theory to American readers via their Foreign Agents series.  The works published range from theory to fiction, activism and confession to economics and sexuality into a “nuanced and polemical vision of the present. Some notable works include Natasha Stagg’s Surveys, Tiqqun’s Preliminary Materials for a Theory of the Young-Girl, Chris Kraus’ I Love Dick and Where Art Belongsthe latter being of the intervention series which also yielded Gerald Raunig’s Factories of Knowledge, Industries of Creativity.

Banner Repeater

Banner Repeater is a London-based artist run space and publishing house, with notable projects including Erica Scourti’s The Outagefirst published in 2014, as well as the un-publish series which focuses on emergent ideas around new technologies and Yuri Pattison’s short story postface: pretty good privacy. Founded by Ami Clarke in 2010, BR also holds events, talks, performances, as well as exhibitions including the current solo show Nam-Gut by Jenna Sutela, running to July 30.

Verso Books

Verso Books is an international publishing house claiming to be “the largest independent, radical publishing house in the English-speaking world,” with our recommendations including Franco Bifo Berardi On FuturabilityJuliet Jacques’ Trans: A Memoir, Nick Srnicek  + Alex Williams’ Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work, as well as the Jacobin series, featuring “short interrogations of politics, economics, and culture from a socialist perspective.”

Arcadia Missa

William Kherbek, Ultralife (2017), pub. Arcadia Missa Publishing, London.

Arcadia Missa is a London-based exhibition space and publisher, that includes a several different series, including the How to Sleep Faster journals, existing in print and online at howtosleepfaster.net. There are also their Anthology and Artist Books, with some recommendations including Sarah M. Harrison’s All The ThingsWilliam Kherbek’s UltraLife, and Holly Childs’ Danklands. Co-founded by Rózsa Farkas and Tom Clark, the project began “as a self-organised space in austerity Britain.”

Cornerhouse Publications

Cornerhouse Publications Ltd. is a Manchester-based press focused on contemporary visual arts, while is also part of the art center HOME. Some recommendations include The Creative Stance , featuring Grayson Perry, Marvin Gaye Chetwynd and Sonia Boyce, among others, Sophia Al Maria’s Virgin with a Memory, and You Are Here: Art After the Internet, edited by Omar Kholeif. More recently, Cornerhouse published the unexpectedly controversial collection of short stories, poetry, experimental writing, and flash fiction Dark Habits.

Penny-Ante Editions

Founded in 2006, Penny-Ante is a Los-Angeles-based book publisher and art-based project that works in series-based projects: Anthology Series (2006-2009), Recess Series (2010-2011), Success and Failure Series (2012-2017). Some notable works include Beau Rice’s TEX, Alex Chaves’ Abigail Adams, and Momus’ UnAmerica.

 

now reading #HannahBlack’s ‘Dark Pool Party’ pub by @arcadiamissa + #DominicaPublishing

A post shared by Atractivo Quenobello (@aqnb) on


Dominica Publishing

Founded in 2011 by Los Angeles-based artist and writer Martine Syms, the press is “dedicated to exploring blackness as a topic, reference, marker and audience in visual culture.” Recommended books include Hannah Black’s Dark Pool Party (co-published with Arcadia Missa), Diamond Stingily’s Love, Diamond and Lauren Anderson’s Matters. **

Hanne Lippard’s This Embodiment is launching at Berlin’s Broken Dimanche Press on July 13, 2017.

  share news item

Anna Zett @ Banner Repeater, Jan 29

28 January 2016

Anna Zett is presenting a series of performances at London’s Banner Repeater on January 29.

The event closes off the Berlin-based artist’s Circuit Training exhibition, running at the Hackney art space from November 13, 2015, to January 31, 2016, and will feature a sequence of exercises incorporating text in an attempt to “get in touch with the secular deity generally known as the human nervous system.”

As an artist interested in “the physical end of language”, Zett draws links between boxing as a practice and “the archives of modern art and commerce” in an attempt to connect the experience of fist-fighting with verbal and visual communication.

Circuit Training builds on a practice that has developed from the entanglements of “science and fiction, bones and imagination, entertainment and politics” in “research drama” ‘This Unwieldy Object’ (2014), to boxing as a radical form of dialogue in essays like ‘Fist to Brain‘ at The New Inquiry.

See the FB event page for details.**

Anna Zett, 'Circuit Training' (2015). Video still. Courtesy the artist.
Anna Zett, ‘Circuit Training’ (2015). Video still. Courtesy the artist.
  share news item

Future Library Publishing Fair @ Open School East, Dec 19

18 December 2015

Small publisher One of My Kind (OOMK) is hosting the small press and zine Future Library Publishing Fair at Open School East on December 19.

The fair is hosted as part of Future Library Residency program, supported by Book Works and Open School East. It will feature over 40 stalls of small publishers, presses, and zines including those by the likes of AND publishing, SALT., PaperWork Magazine, Ladette Space, Girls ClubBanner Repeater and more.

This event also comes with music by “lo-fi/riot grrl/afro punk” band Big Joanie and food by BARBEDOUN.

See the OOMK’s even page for details.**

  share news item

Banner Repeater fundraiser party @ L’Entrepot, Dec 4

4 December 2015

Banner Repeater is hosting a fundraising lottery prize-pulling party at London’s L’Entrepot on December 4.

The lottery has been runs online here and here and at the train platform itself until December 4 and is being used to help fund some of the art space’s costs, including rent and running costs, new artworks, publications and commissions, on-going reading groups, and development of the Digital Archive of Artists’ Publishing: BookBlast.

The lottery tickets (priced at £5 each, while a membership of £30 comes with 7 free tickets) bring a chance to win various prints, publications and items from the Banner Repeater portfolio, including works by Hannah Sawtell, Jesse Darling, and Erica Scourti.

See the Banner Repeater website for details. **

  share news item

Publishing as Process @ Goethe Institut, Nov 18

18 November 2015

Goethe Institut launches the second part of their collaborative mini-series with Banner Repeater, titled Publishing as Process and taking place at the London location on November 18 .

The series concentrates on exhibition and publishing in the digital age with a programme of readings and panel discussions addressing how the two fields are effected by the “digitalisation and the distribution channels the internet provides”, including Ché Zara BlomfieldAlessandro LudovicoYuri Pattison, and Ami Clarke from Banner Repeater as a moderator.

Whereas the series’ first event, Institutionalising the Digital, featured a take-over of the Goethe-Institut’s website, Publishing as Process will materialize as a publication for Banner Repeater’s UN-PUBLISH series.

See the event page for details.**

Yuri Pattison, 'Chelyabinsk eBay Extrusion'. Photo by Andy Crouch. Image courtesy the artist.
Yuri Pattison, ‘Chelyabinsk eBay Extrusion’. Photo by Andy Crouch. Image courtesy the artist.

  share news item

Anna Zett @ Banner Repeater, Nov 13 – Jan 31

12 November 2015

Anna Zett “plays with the physical end of language” in Circuit Training, an exhibition of a newly commissioned video and text work running at Banner Repeater from November 13 to January 31.

Drawing from the artist’s own boxing practice and from general archives of modern art and commerce, Zett produces a series of texts and images that attempt to connect the notion of fighting with that of verbal and visual communication.

“Boxing is”, the press release writes, “a radical form of dialogue, just like a caress, but at the other end of language”. Zett’s show also features a performance on January 29 and comes alongside Banner Repeater’s fundraiser.

See the exhibition page for details.

images-stories-download image web-457x265

  share news item

LAB @ Ithuba Gallery, Mar 13 – Apr 2

13 March 2015

Three-part art exhibition LAB is bringing together three independent artist-run UK spaces work with Johannesburg’s Ithuba Arts Gallery.

The gallery acts as a sort of halfway between the British and South African visual art scenes, and the show explores the possibilities of working across the two cultures. The project began when the British Council Connect ZA invited the director of Ithuba Arts Gallery to visit the UK, researching the visual arts there and establishing contact with independent or artist-run spaces.

The result, based on the gallery director’s selection, was a three-part show with London’s AutoItalia SouthEast and Banner Repeater, as well as Birmingham’s Eastside Projects. The spaces then made the journey to South Africa, to become acquainted with both commercial and independent spaces and artists there. 

See the exhibition FB page for details. **

Screen Shot 2015-03-13 at 17.43.20

  share news item

Events + exhibition openings (Week Dec 7)

10 December 2014

With most of the last of the exhibitions for 2014 opening at the end of November, December kicks off the holidays with too many events to mention individually, so here’s a list. Special mentioned should go to Imran Perretta and Takeshi Shiomitsu‘s /marinate exhibition at FFrigidaire, several readings across the western world launching Holly Childs‘ second book Danklands and a talk including Iranian philosopher Reza Negarestani at Banner Repeater.

There will also be performances from Dan Bodan and Benedict Drew in London, as well as another Lunch Bytes in Stockholm, another CREAMCAKE and a new V4ULT location in Berlin and a Nick DeMarco exhibition in New York. Pick a date and peruse at your leisure. **

EVENTS

Gaybar celebrates Leslie Feinberg @ Rye Lane Studios, Dec 10

Private Settings film screenings @ MoMA Warsaw, Dec 10

Shana Moulton performance @ SLG, Dec 10

E+E, Krysaor, Nkisi & Why Be @ Endless, Dec 10

The Locoemotive Lounge  @ Cafe Kaizen  Dec 10

* * * *  MOONSIGN// DUBAIS  //LANII //MSHR  @ XB * * * * *  @ Liebig 34, Dec 10

Holly Childs Danklands launches: London on Dec 9, Berlin on Dec 11, Melbourne on Dec 16 and Sydney on Dec 18

Unreliable Source reading installation @ DRAF, Dec 10

Tropical Waste: Lotic + Felicita @ The Waiting Room, Dec 11

INFRA_SPECTION @ The White Building, Dec 11

Skinhead: An Archive @ Ditto Press, Dec 11

Gravy Party @ Apiary Studios Dec 12

Galavant Evenings  @ Stephen House, Dec 12

Lunch Bytes Life: Feminism @ Tensta Konsthall, Dec 12

Dan Bodan @ Birthdays, Dec 12

Algorithms, Zerowork, and Planning @ Banner Repeater, Dec 12

The Rare Earth Medicine Show @ Troy Town Art Pottery, Dec 12

/// A Weekend of Schizo-Culture /// @ Space, Dec 12 – 13

Kernel – Enclosures (First attempt) @ V4ULT, Dec 13

Friends with Books: Art Book Fair Berlin, Dec 13

CREAMCAKE presents E+E &c @ Südblock, Dec 13

Beyond the Rocks @ Kazachenko’s Apartment, Dec 13

Poverty Failure Rejection @ MilMa, Dec 13

Mulled wine @ Maria Stenfors, Dec 13

Benedict Drew @ Café OTO, Dec 14

OPENING

Vincent Broquaire @ XPO Gallery, Dec 11

Go Mango ~ Pt.1 @ Caustic Coastal, Dec 11 – 21

Chris Lux @ Jupiter Woods, Dec 12 – Jan 4

Nick DeMarco @ Interstate, Dec 13

Imran Perretta & Takeshi Shiomitsu: /marinate @ FFrigidaire, Dec 14

Hubert Marot @ Paris20, Dec 14**

 

  share news item

Pil + Galia Kollectiv talk @ Banner Repeater, Nov 11

10 November 2014

Banner Repeater is hosting a conversation with Pil and Galia Kollectiv and Elena Poughia at their London art space on November 11 at 7pm.

The talk, titled ‘A dialogue as discussion’ brings the London-based collective, comprised of artists, writers and curators working collaboratively, to address the “legacy of modernism” and the relationship between art and politics.

They are sitting down with Poughia, the publisher and editor of the DIALOGOS bimonthly zine, the second issue of which featured an interview with Pil and Galia Kollectiv that began on Skype and evolved to print, accompanied by a podcast.

See the Banner Repeater event page for details. **

142215-7dad5e33616140d78752011ced580982

  share news item

Mercedes Bunz @ Banner Repeater, Oct 23

22 October 2014

London’s Banner Repeater is hosting a talk by technology and media writer Mercedes Bunz, running as part of the Low Animal Spirits exhibition on October 23.

Driven by real-time data and derived from text sourced from global news feeds, Richard Cochrane and (Banner Repeater founder) Ami Clarke‘s Low Animal Spirits explores the theory of probability and the phenomena of ‘low animal spirits’, or mass dips in confidence, that illustrate mass mentality, and Bunz uses this idea to examine life “in a world in which technology has become our second nature”.

The author of The Silent Revolution: How Algorithms Changed Knowledge, Work, Journalism, and Politics Without Making Too Much Noise attempts to “map out areas in the knowledge landscape of today” and to examine how these algorithms affect knowledge in the public sphere.

See the FB event page for details. **

thesilentrevolution

  share news item

Art Licks Weekend London, Oct 2 – 5

2 October 2014

After an acclaimed opening year in 2013, Art Licks Weekend festival is returning to London for its second edition, running at venues across town from October 2 to October 5.

And the line-up this year is impressive, with a thick stack of new galleries, artist-run spaces, not-for-profits, and independent curatorial projects opening up for the festival. Writer and artist Hannah Black is showing a video work in group show You Me Us Them, Fabienne Hess and Johann Arens are joining a slew of others for the Artist Moving Image: Looking, Mediated screening event and Lisa Brice is bringing her solo show Cut Your Coat to French Riviera.

Joey Holder is performing a live DJ/VJ set at Conduir, Lawrence Lek is joining the Tomb, Shrine, Survey-Marker, Spare-Part group show at Enclave, and Sarah Boulton is joining a handful of others for the Global Talk Internet group show at Studio Parlour.

Because the short weekend is so stacked with good events, we’ve already covered a handful independently, including Candice Jacobs’s INHALE, the Heathers group show, The Mycological Twist at Jupiter Woods, and Banner Repeater‘s Low Animal Spirits.

See the Art Licks programme for details. **

aaa

Header image: ‘Pavilion Lost’, Pavilion (Sophie Yetton & Gabriel Birch)

  share news item

Low Animal Spirits @ Banner Repeater, Sep 19 – Nov 30

17 September 2014

Banner Repeater will be hosting Low Animal Spirits, the latest exhibition from Richard Cochrane and Banner Repeater founder Ami Clarke, at their London space from September 19 to November 30.

Low Animal Spirits makes use of an algorithm driven by real-time data sourced from global news and made into a “live model of high frequency trading”. Writer/musician/educator Cochrane and artist Clarke combine forces to explore the theory of probability and the phenomena of ‘low animal spirits’, or a mass downturn in confidence, that illustrates the unpredictable herd-like mentality of the masses.

A host of events is taking place at Banner Repeater alongside the exhibition, including a talk with Clarke and Cochrane on October 4, a talk with Mercedes Bunz, author of The Silent Revolution: How Algorithms Changed Knowledge, Work, Journalism, and Politics Without Making Too Much Noise, on October 23, and a talk with Matteo Pasquinelli (editor of The Algorithms of Capital) and Nick Srnicek (co-author of Inventing the Future) on November 6.

See the Banner Repeater exhibition page for details. **

600px_counters-3-for-web

  share news item

Space-Time: The Future @ Wysing Arts Centre, Aug 30

29 August 2014

Space-Time: The FutureWysing Arts Centre‘s fifth annual all-day festival of art and music, takes place at the rural Cambridge site on August 30.

For the first time since its inception, Space-Time will lend its focus to women working in experimental and electronic music, art and bands fronted by women, highlighting the range of sounds over 12 hours of live music, performances and screenings that will spread across three indoor stage areas, as well as a covered stall area.

Filling out the packed schedule are live music shows and performances by over 20 acts, including artist Hannah Sawtell, members of 70s post-punk group The Raincoats and their logical creative offspring Trash Kit, as well as Peepholes, Holly Herndon, Yola Fatoush and Ravioli Me Away – the latter of which also features artists Alice Theobald and Rosie Ridgway, as well as ex-PLUG member and Power Lunches founder Sian Dorrer.

Along the covered stall area, one can find an impressive lineup of gallery spaces and publishing houses, including Arcadia Missa, Banner Repeater, Project/Number, and French Riviera from London, curatorial collective Mexico from Leeds, as well as Matt Jenner’s 100-deep Foam archives and ‘anonymous’ contemporary art collective Pelican Haus.

See the Space-Time: The Future event page for details. **

  share news item

Erica Scourti, Snow Crash + dissolving into data

27 July 2014

“I had registered and dissolved. Into code. Into data”, writes J. A. Harrington, acting as conduit to the thoughts of artist Erica Scourti in a ghost-written memoir. The Outage: Her Story (as constructed by Him) is the culmination of mostly public, sometimes private data collected from the internet and surrendered to a stranger to give it subjectivity.

As part of London project space Banner Repeater’s Snow Crash program, run throughout June and July and taking its title from the 1992 science fiction novel by Neal Stephenson of the same name, the exhibition reflects the overwhelming idea of Big Data through a space brimming with information. “Everyone’s producing an image of themselves for an algorithmic gaze, intentionally or not”, says Scourti during the Unidentified Fictionary Objects artist talk launching The Outage, as one considers the grid-like shelving of the Snow Crash exhibition, presenting printed images and words, with its own internal logic.

Erica Scourti + J.A. Harrington @ Banner Repeater. Courtesy the gallery.
Erica Scourti + J.A. Harrington @ Banner Repeater.

There are connections to be made here, each one specific to a contextual intersection –physical, ideological, personal –as one discerns a Cartesian reference in Ami Clarke‘s ‘Impossible Structures “the eye that remains of the me that was I” (Error-Correction: an introduction to future diagrams: take 3)’ Android app, becoming barely decipherable through the cloudy ebb of its looping computer melody, only to re-emerge elsewhere. “A Cartesian system of abstract ground: space as a whole” repeats a quote from Clarke’s Error-correction –take 3 –a script. It’s a shiny print zine lying on a shelf with her UN-PUBLISH (2.01), a meta-fiction taken from the IM conversations of bradass87, ie. Chelsea (aka Bradley) Manning, first released by Wired in 2011 a year after her arrest.

Published in parallel with the exhibition, the countless covers of Scourti’s book come in a display stand in one corner, featuring a self-portrait that is filtered, reformatted and endlessly reproduced from a photo on an iPhone. Above it hang reams of printed research information –email correspondence, Facebook comments and data research profiles. Too much to process. “The more information there is, the more any sense of narrative dissolves into itself”, says Harrington during Unidentified Fictionary Objects, pointing to how banal the unfiltered individual, raw data, really is.

There’s a list of NSA trigger words on the wall behind The Outage, ranging from ‘eavesdropping’, ‘debugging’ and ‘interception’ to ‘porno, ‘artichoke’ and ‘badger’. On one of the shelves sits a Russian-to-English translation of V. F. Odoevsky’s 4338 AD 19th century prose by Yuri Pattison, the strikethroughs and comments left behind by its translator illustrating the problem of what’s lost in the conversion. In an imagined future where its protagonist Hippolytus Tsungiev considers the “huge bundles of material” left behind by the now extinct ‘Germans’ suggesting “some sort of caste or class”, it occurs to him that “a lot must depend on the work of your curators of antiquities”.

The same applies to The Outage when its first-person persona asks, “how were you supposed to enjoy looking for personal meaning in the souvenirs of that class of people who manipulated history to your exclusion?” It’s probably that same class that threatened to discharge a gender dysphoric Manning from the US military for “occupational problem and adjustment disorder”. Jesse Darling’s EMDR (eye movement desentization and reprocessing) video comes as a deeply troubling reaction to the trauma of sexual oppression and intrusion in a “self-administered” therapy session for the treatment of its after-effects. “Now try to imagine yourself as a whole”, goes the potential pun of its ‘healing’ visual script before ending on the violence of, “now allow this to wrench you apart”.

“It became difficult to disentangle the emotion of feeling psychotic from its consumer experience”, states The Outage, in recognising that “the domain of private, interior human communication had already been absorbed by nano targeted advertising. To project who your search engine thinks you are”. The generalised question of Snow Crash then becomes, ‘who are we and what do we actually know, if anything? As Odoevsky’s Tsungiev character grieves the disappearance of paper-written records as the accelerated disintegration of historical documentation, this next stage of communicative (d)evolution into the mass ‘digitisation’ of our archival memory on to soon-to-be-obsolete hardware makes this issue only more urgent. The ideas of 4338 AD not only sit in parallel to but is literally facing Pattison’s ‘In colocation, time displacement’ (2014) film piece, featuring footage taken from inside Sweden’s Pionen datacentre, host to Wikileaks, using legacy lenses incompatible with the HD camera being used.

Near to 4338 AD, Clarke’s UN-PUBLISH (2.01) –‘Is it built around a formula? the air gap has been penetrated’ is the first of a series named after the concept of ‘un-publishing’ as understood by Julian Assange, where online data is easily manipulated, “in that it is exceptionally easy to delete”. It’s an idea that has implications for the future but also, particularly for the present. When considering the disturbing legislation over the recent “right to be forgotten” ruling, the question is, a right for whom? bradass87 had little control over the dissemination of, not only her private records (a control that the State insists on), but even her own self-representation:

“i wouldn’t mind going to
prison for the rest of my life, or being executed so much, if it wasn’t for the
possibility of having
pictures of me… plastered all over the world press… as boy”

Snow Crash (2014) @ Banner Repeater. Courtesy the gallery.
Snow Crash (2014) @ Banner Repeater.

Ironically, in the act of taking this conversation and embedding it in the finality of print form, Clarke herself has appropriated authority over Manning’s image, however sympathetically, in the same way that Scourti had delivered hers into Harrington’s. But, as Scourti herself says in conversation, “I never imagined that what I was putting across was some kind of authentic coherent self, mainly because I don’t believe that exists. I see that as more a historically contingent construction”. Thus the illusion of reality, truth, freedom.

“Intentionality, he argues, is a biological phenomenon”, writes Tyler Coburn in Robots Building Robots, a travelogue of sorts written alongside improvised performances in a Taiwanese science park and dangling from a chain in a corner of Snow Crash. It’s a quote from philosopher John Searle illustrating the core distinction between human and machine at the same time as the simulated voice of Anna Barnham‘s Penetrating Squid audio disrupts it. A randomly generated sequence of text tells “like you intention is one hot machine” its weight coming through the interpretation and not the motive behind what’s been complicated by computer processes.

Coburn’s “infantilism of machinic dependence” echoes Scourti/Harrington’s exposure and anxiety of online dependence in The Outage: “I’ve been taken so far against my will for so long that I’ve forgotten how to do it on my own.” All this, in the turmoil of too much information; a vortex of “pure language which no longer mean[s] or expresse[s] anything.**

Exhibition photos, top-right.

Erica Scourti’s The Outage, ghost-written by J. A. Harrington, was published by Banner Repeater during its Snow Crash exhibition, running May 2 to July 20, 2014.

All images courtesy Banner Repeater.

  share news item