4 Channel video installation that was presented at The Civic gallery, Barnsley, UK as part of OCA/UCA MA degree show, June 2019  

 

Filming & animation: Alan Rutherford as part of artist residency at SERDE, Aizpute, Latvia.  
Main music: composed and performed by Bernard O'Neil, with additional minor composition by Alan Rutherford. 

 

 

 

Part of Duodecimal, OCA MFA degree show 2019 (www.duodecimalart.net

 

Description of the work:

 

If there are no more dustbins of history, this is because History itself has become a dustbin. It has become its own dustbin, just as the planet itself is becoming its own dustbin.’ - Jean Baudrillard

Through the process of Globalisation in the 1990s, we now have access to this ‘dustbin of histories’. How do we investigate and explore this history?

Visiting a place can reveal it’s history and also the current reality of a place and it’s people. There are ideological power relations between the past and present and power struggles between the past built environment (such as monuments and installations) and the current attitudes towards them.

Narratives are continually played out within the historical power relations of a society. Within these, there are tensions such as the construction and deconstruction of cultural identity. The places and the tensions with the past are explored in my work. In making site visits, I come across objects where identity has clearly manifested itself. But whose identity is it?

Recent film and sculptural works seek to explore this condition of loss and disappearance, where the past built environments become ‘sites of memory’. By accessing found texts and researching local archives, pastiche re-creations of places and scenes are re-created and explored in film. The scenes have a visual Kuleshov effect that makes a distinct contrast between such things as historical events, geography, ideology and collective cultural identity: which can all attempt to overwrite or suppress identity.

 

 

Single channel Video (20 mins, HD) :

 

There is a catalogue available (PDF, 3mb) that accompanies this work. It can be downloaded here: 

 

There is a text available titled 'The Persistence of Identity' (PDF, 774kb) that accompanies this work. It can be downloaded here: 

 

 

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