Monument is a moving image work created for Hidden Door Festival 2016 as part of their Invited Artist Programme. The piece explores a collapse of distance and structure, beginning in a familiar natural environment before entering into a world in which scale, place and substance are left uncertain, feeling at once internal and external, above and below the surface.
The work draws on many ideas and influences, at the forefront of my research was the work of Superstudio, a collective of architects who were based in Florence in the 1960’s. One of their numerous proposals was to install a worldwide grid system, which would connect every place to every other, equalising every point on earth. This proposal for me is a narrative for the digital landscape of a globalised world and a metaphor for the physical interaction of matter, the entropic process away from structure and towards a state of absolute chaotic unity.
The video takes a portrait format and is projected upon a screen which is angled down towards its audience, giving the screen the imposing presence of a character within the space. The title of the work is a reference to another of Superstudio’s projects, entitled The Continuous Monument. A monument is rooted in the time it is constructed, the past which it commemorates, and the future it is built to see, but even a structure built to last will not endure forever.
Producer: Alison Piper