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A 21st Century Pastoral
Craig Nugent BA(Hons) MFA
Published by Dundee University, Dundee, Scotland.
“ The music on this Compact Digital Disc was originally recorded on analog equipment. We have attempted to preserve, as closely as possible the sound of the original recording. Because of its high resolution however, the compact disc can reveal limitations of the source tape.”
There is an implicit hypothetical proposition here setting the challenge and laying the trap: if this sounds bad it is because it is so good, it sounds bad therefore it is good. Discernment has its price. Its unlistenableness is the measure of its excellence. We are reassured and comforted, technology is doing its job; advancing. A backwards step, a sideways step, an upward step, a downward step: all count as advancement. All we ask is that technology and its language offer us a sense of temporal movement: product and function are completely subordinate to this desire. Purposeless superfluity is no basis for objection. How else could this type of writing, this kind of statement find unquestioning acceptability when it is so flagrantly at odds with experience.
The techno-pastoral functions on a presupposition of authority. Once this authority is in place experience can then be processed through a series of linguistic filters and made void. Now the only way that the subject can be meaningfully discussed and understood is by recourse to an imposed authoritative vocabulary. This creates contextual differentiation between authoritative groups ie. belonging and not belonging. Any attempt by anyone to recount or discuss their experience of the subject in terms other than those laid down by the authority can be righteously dismissed or patronised, dilute to suit.
Control is established, either you subscribe to a collective self deception and accept that 2+2=5, a necessary prerequisite in a society where language and meaning are contingent to the constantly shifting ethos of a market economy (and remember there is comfort in numbers) or you tread a lonely path absorbed in a schizophrenic haze reconciling yourself to your own stupidity; either way all strategic positions contain an implicit acknowledgement of the controlling other.
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March 18 - 23 2008
Sheffield Railroad Station Sheffield UK
Joyce Yahouda Gallery Montreal March 29 - April 26 2008
Beijing October 11 -November 15 2008
'Man with a movie camera.'
International artist collaboration.
July1 2007
Channel4. FourDocs.
'Is This Civilisation'.
Filmed on location North East Scotland.
March 29 2007
Lowsalt, The Panopticon Theatre, Glasgow
Illusions in fact and fiction
‘Herna’. (Film) Recorded Prague, Czech Republic, 2007.
July 2006
Meadow Mill, Dundee, Scotland.
‘Of Fair and Wet Meadows’. 18 minute sound work using
reconstructed in situ recordings.
Funded by a Visual Research Grant.
July - October 2006
National Gallery, Isle of Man.
‘Journey is Belonging’. (Film) A collaboration with Mary Modeen.
Place. Home. Exploring the paradox at the root of these notions:
Can it only be through mobilisation that we come to recognise
ourselves as belonging. Is absence a prerequisite of belonging?
June 2006 - June 2007
‘Lostother’. Environmental work in situ. East Coast and Central belt, Scotland. World wide web.
‘ as a nation we are suffering from a crisis in confidence...’
Increasing consumer receptivity to the happiness industry. There aint no self worth issue that you can’t buy your way out of...keep
polishing that car...
View at: lostother.blogspot.com
1 - 10 August 2005
Air Vent, Radio Lora, Zurich.
‘Untitled’. Sound work.
A bare naked lo tech free from artifice 5 minute recording of life in
my street.
Broadcast on world wide web by Radio Lora, Zurich.
December 2004
Centrespace VRC, DCA Dundee, Masters Expo.
‘A punnet of peaches’.
An investigation into picturesque vocabularies and their use
in shaping perception. A basis for social exclusion?
November 2004
The Meffan Gallery, Angus.
‘Smollett’s Arcadia’. Mixed media installation.
A site specific work investigating picturesque vocabularies
and their use in shaping perception. Specifically looking at the
texts of 18th century Scottish writer Tobias Smollett.
November 2004
Lower Foyer Gallery, Dundee. Masters group show.
‘...to Robert Smithson’.
Hypersurface. A collision of text and matter.
October 2004
Generator, Dundee.
‘Broth’. (short film)
August 2004
Artitecture 2004, Collins Gallery, Glasgow.
Experimental digital work. Deconstruction and the folly.
Where structure is no longer allied to function. Beyond critiques based on binary oppositions. Singularity.
August 2004
South Street Gallery, St Andrews. Autumn 1.
‘Alt Clut I’ and ‘Alt Clut II’.
July 2004
The Royal Burgh of Pittenweem Arts Festival, Pittenweem.
Commisssioned artist.
‘Haiku with Argos Catalogue’ and ‘ The salt pans’.
Opposing cultural realms. A conceptual disfigurement.
August 2003
Generator 2003, Dundee. Members show.
‘Untitled’.
August 2003
Compass Gallery, Glasgow. New Generation show.
‘Untitled’.
October 2003
Collective Gallery, Edinburgh. New Work Scotland. Shortlisted.
June 2003
Cooper Gallery, Dundee. Degree Show.
Mixed media installation.
April 2003
The Lighthouse, Glasgow.
‘Take a pair...’. Experimental digital work.
Deconstruction and the folly. Where structure is no longer allied to function. Beyond critiques based on binary oppositions. Singularity.
February 2003
Royal Scottish Academy, City Arts Centre, Edinburgh.
‘Untitled’.
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