Delphine Bedient and Jason King ORAL CULTURE Part of Synthesis: Our Hands are Tied presented by RECESS
ORAL CULTURE concerns the dreams of technology. These dreams are the dream to become indifferentially embedded into the environment, the dream to disappear the world into a system in which all parts are substitutable, and the dream to function seamlessly in order eradicate the possibility of its becoming conspicuous. ORAL CULTURE also concerns constant activity. These activities are the activity of listening, the activity of speaking, and the activity of memory. ORAL CULTURE finally concerns performance. These performances are the performance of Culture and the performance of public speaking. This is not to say these are the only things that ORAL CULTURE concerns, only some of the determinative.
ORAL CULTURE is the final progression of a piece embarked upon by Gabe Flores and Abe Ingle in the winter of 2010. Then, it was a video installation work, in which interviewed subjects were made to stream silently and endlessly under a looped phone conversation by the artists, who discussed the project in terms of its being a failure. The second progression, collaborated upon by Gabe and Jason King, resurrected the interviews conducted by Abe and endlessly cycled dramatic readings of them in the gallery space. The questions were excised, replaced by ellipses, directing the performer to pause whenever he or she came across them. This final installment desires to streamline themes broached by the first two evolutionary stages and by doing so engineer a provocation - themes ranging from the confrontation of man and technology, to the transmission of words through the act of speaking, to the politics of performance and of criticism and of the nearness of art objects in spaces, spaces entrenched in economies of etiquette and ruled by expectations.
Exhibition Description Place is hosting SYNTHESIS: Our Hands are Tied, the final installment of the Synthesis Series a Recess production. The third and final project in this collaborative round robin have the twelve artists again switching partners. With two previous shows, Thesis and Antithesis behind them, the twelve original artists are looking to finish what others had started along with four new artist.
In an attempt to eschew the didactic constraints of contemporary art as practiced today, The Synthesis Series functions under a new curatorial and production-based paradigm. Twelve artists, selected for their divergent backgrounds and capacity for collaboration, have been randomly paired into groups of two. As the groups have been tossed around, the new pairings have responded to the projects previously created. This unfolding, evolving process enables the attendants to witness works as they develop over time, and with the alternative perspective that new voices have brought to the table.
This formula seeks to produce a substantial dialogue between artist, curator, and art audience.RECESS invites you to participate in an ongoing, cross-collaborative series of exhibitions that inject a dialectical approach straight into the veins of the contemporary arts — from the level of production to the display, and all those spaces and traces in between.
