RIGs: the repository of irrational gestures - backdrop ♯ IIII 2019

RIGs ♯ IIII 2019 Backdrop: The Repository of Irrational Gestures ♯ IIII A looped video work installed within a largescale reproduction of a C16 engraving with accompanying colour lighting arrangement. With contributions from Anita Delaney, Jessica Harrington, Dr Wendy Leeks and Lucy Lound. RIG’s is an evolving archive, in the form of a video installation, that critically examines the role of the irrational in the C21st. If it is possible for us to agree that the irrational describes those actions, thinking and behaviours that appear to be more illogical than other alternatives, then, the artwork opens up a space for us to consider past and present conceptualisations of irrationality. The repository is created through the juxtaposition of found footage; either visual, textural or audible whose manipulated form is produced through a clashing together of selected and invited contributions from other artists and academics. In total the artwork’s method of production, through this series of sampled counterpoints, creates a dissonant affect for the audience. Each version of RIG’s is different as new sequences are added, the video is re-edited and then installed in a new way each time it is exhibited. The piece does not have a linear structure, but rather presents a visual cacophony through an collaged amalgamation, where each sequence sits in contrast and challenges the one before it, undermining its own agency. In this way RIG’s offers a transitory, contemporary archive that offers a different set of machinations each time it is viewed. RIG’s ♯ IIII includes newly commissioned footage by the artist Anita Delaney whose work has been exhibited at Videonale 16, Kunstmuseum Bonn and as part of Bloomberg Contemporaries. It also extended the installation format of the repository by playing the looped video on a monitor situated in an largescale reproduction of C16 engraving by Hendrik Hondius of the Strasburg dancing plague in 1518, selectively illuminated by coloured lights. RIG’s as a project also informs a developing set of curatorial concerns relating to the exhibition as installation; juxtaposition and the non-alignment of artworks in the creation of shifting perspectives and dissonant affects.