Sean Snyder, Working material from Index, 2008-09 / Exhibition, 2008 / Photographs, 2009
"The various works consist of a series of experiments made by the artist in the process of digitizing and destroying his archive, in which the materials themselves become the subject of investigation. Included is documentation of the physical storage matter such as printed matter, scratched CDs and DVDs, celluloid, and disassembled electronics. A series of larger format works is based on the mistakes and corruption of data encountered in the transfer between imaging formats. The various works on display outline the process by which the material of the archive were catalogued and destroyed. Using various imaging techniques including microphotography Snyder attempts to identify the underlying decision making process and vocabulary used working with images and their ideological construct. Exhibition is a video about art, its reception and the discourse it generates as well as the work involved in the production of exhibitions. Exhibition reflects the rituals and conventions of the social dimension of art and the failure of educational projects based on assumptions of the universal aesthetic experience. The video uses as a subject the Soviet documentary film Noble Impulses of Soul, 1965, by Israel Goldstein. In typical 1960s Soviet style, the pedagogical tone of the film’s narrative praises the efforts of a provincial museum in the village of Parkhomivka in Eastern Ukraine revolving around an exhibition of contemporary Mexican art presented at the museum and an art history lecture at a village farm. The reprocessed video restructures the primary components, eliminates the voice of the narrator, and reorders the chronology of the film to break the continuous realistic world of documentary and alluding to the standardized and meaningless language that talks through people." (Press release for Sean Snyder, exhibition at Galerie Chantal Crousel, Paris, April-May, 2009)
Haunted tracks:
The Advisory Circle, 18 The Old Schoolhouse
Caretaker, Lacunar Amnesia
Oneohtrix Point Never, Transmat Memories
James Ferraro, Surveillance/Sounds From The Cam 2: Inside the Mutant Church
Moon Wiring Club, A Slip in the Forth Dimension