Striations embedded in stone are the results of tension and stress. In geological terms, they are the trappings of atmospheric tension. Their wandering marks are often beautiful on the surface but result from extreme pressure. How might we engage in considering all of those tensions and pressures not crystalized, not recorded and which have evaded the record? Those histories that have been removed, displaced or reconstructed through a façade that supports those who for centuries have been applying the pressure. What role might a reconfigured stance in relation to what is ordained “the archive” have on all of this? Text driven film works call upon an archive that, when employed as collage, alter notions of temporality, embrace text for its relation to orality and unsettle any trust we may place on sources along with any reliance that these words have on context.
The sonic environment created in conversation with the performed silence of moving image can be a reminder of the power of the ethereal, the impermanent and its capacity to shape and dictate our relationship to what we see, to what we read. The sound waves themselves moving the air particles and injecting new tension into the atmosphere, occupying space while resisting permanance. The practice of Minted in Enemy Bronze is a recognition of all of those material forms that, never losing their mineralogical origins are reclaimed and recycled in an endless merry-go-round of ownership and authorship that is insensitive to all those unclaimed and intangible measures that have always existed beyond the calculated perspective of claims of cultural epistemicide.
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Groundings, 2023, prints. Installation view at the British School at Rome
