Thursday, 13 March 2014

Gallery Visit: Worlds In Collision, Samstag Museum, Adelaide

Exhibition leaflet


'Worlds in Collision is an exhibition of practices and projects that propose new models of knowledge, map uncharted areas and reveal hidden narratives. The works operate in areas where one way of understanding or modelling a world might end, and another may begin. The artists explore historical, cultural, political, psychological and psychedelic currents, returns and transformations to suggest ways that new possibilities might be developed or imagined.

The diverse works are linked by points of reference to, or echoes of, the various bodies of interest and approach that helped constitute the counter-culture of the 60s and early 70s; when alternative models to those of mainstream Western rationalist thought were used to imagine potentials for technological social and psychological change, and wider agendas of transformation.

For over a decade Susan Hiller has been researching and assembling an archive of the experiences of people who have died or come close to death and have returned to consciousness with a memory of what happened during this experience. Near-death experiences have and continue to be studied intensively in the fields of psychology, psychiatry, neuro-physiology and hospital medicine. Studies are inconclusive and at times contradictory, offering various explanations for the phenomenon. Despite the lack of harmonious scientific explanation, increasing numbers of ordinary people continue to report such experiences.


In Channels these accounts, related in many different languages, are transmitted to us by means of over one hundred analogue television sets, a technology designed to pick up signals that, in many countries, are no longer broadcast.'




The darkness of the room definitely sets a certain mood
For myself, having a particular love of light, the reflection of the screens on the floorboards and the glow of blue on the walls and faces of the viewers was a lovely, possibly unsought element

No comments:

Post a Comment