STEVEN CLAYDON
THE FICTIONAL PIXEL AND THE ANCIENT SET
9 January — 5 April 2015
NO.5
Bergen Kunsthall
In NO.5 Bergen Kunsthall revisits selected artworks and exhibitions, previously presented elsewhere in the world. Initiated in response to the increasing acceleration of both the production and reception of art, NO.5 provides an opportunity to slow down, focus on, and look again at particular works, exhibitions or fragments of exhibitions. For this re-presentation Bergen Kunsthall has commissioned a new critical text by Steven Cairns.
Tours:
Every Sunday at 2pm
To coincide with the exhibitions “The Noing Uv It” and “The
Showing Uv It”, British artist Steven Claydon will re-present two seminal video
works in a newly conceived exhibition environment. The Fictional Pixel and The
Ancient Set (both 2008) have been shown together a number of times in an
evolving series of installations at the Serpentine Pavilion, FormContent,
London and LIAF in Norway. Both films concern themselves with ideas of
authenticity, linguistics and etymology, as well as the way in which contemporary
culture co-opts emblems, ideas and artefacts from the past in order to
spuriously deploy them in the service of a fictionalising present. Collaging
together found material from an Apple iPhone promotional video; footage from
historic re-enactments of ancient music and poetry; and veiled references to
Martin Heidegger, as represented by the motif of the Smurf, The Fictional Pixel
proposes an equivalence between the atom — first advanced as a theory in
pre-Socratic thinking as the smallest indivisible particle of matter — and the
pixel or ‘picture-element’, first used as a term by NASA in relation to video
transmissions from the moon. Both of these elements are harnessed as base or
fundamental units — a kind of lowest common denominator in the fabrication of
material ‘events’.
The Ancient Set develops these themes further, mixing
together images of classical sculpture —including Democratus who first
conceived of the atom — with found footage from contemporary re-enactments and
performances, creating a chaos of images and sound generated using an analogue
video synthesizer. This use of both digital and analogue production in the
manufacture of the film mirrors the schism between historical artifact and
speculative reproduction. Atoms become pixels and the cumulative effect renders
the work into what the artist describes as ‘a kind of fugitive object or
concrete event.’ Housed within the constructed display environment, the work
assumes an even greater material, sculptural quality. Steven Claydon (b. 1969) lives
and works in London. Claydon is the co-curator of “The Noing Uv It”. In
addition to his practice as an artist he has also been involved in experimental
electronic music for over 20 years, most notably as part of the bands Add N to
X, Jack to Jack (with Mark Leckey) and Long Meg.
Special Thanks to NO.5 Bergen Kunsthall
All Images Courtesy Sadie Coles HQ, London.