Rhoades every where…
Last night I slept 3:30am to 6:30am. I just couldn’t fall asleep. Partly over-saturation from an amazing day and partly jet lag. My mind was buzzing with ideas and possibilities and when I awoke and couldn’t get back to sleep I decide to read a Jason Rhoades essay I had brought with me. It’s actually an transcript of a conversation between Rhoades and Eva Mayer-Hermann discussing his ‘Perfect World’ installation in 2000.
It’s called:
“A Place Where Nobody
Could Step
Over My
Extension Cords
Or: The Next Level.
At the End of
the Rainbow.
Perfect World.”
Genius. Emphasis his.
Some of what he had to say seemed to relate directly to my recent work – installations with moving image responding to information excess.
“All pieces of mine are kind of models or metaphors for the physical world. The piece starts from a small model, then as a public you’re next to a bigger model, then you realize that you are in an even bigger model, you compare it to your scale. Within this structure it is infinite to either direction… The work is about how you come into these experiences or moral questions or physical questions. It is how you perceive them. For example, you freak out about bugs, they are small but they are many. You have power over them, but then you realize that you are the same size as the bugs and you treat the relationship differently…” [Rhoades (2000) p.18]
And then later discussing machine elements of the ‘Perfect World’ (which included amongst others a slow printer continuously printing pictures of his father’s allotment…)
“You have various kinds of machines, like a history of machines. They are all included in the structure, one being the buffing machine, another the printer, the sewing machine and the lifts. They are a bit like keys. There are certain technological revolutions which happened in these machines which helped building this apparatus… I would be very happy if all my materials and my tools, all my fantasy of physical elements will be there: like a pile of pipes, a pile of clamps, pile of paper, pile of fabric, all these industrial quantities of things would be there.” [Rhoades (2000) p.22]
Food for thought as I reflect on my last piece of work which was in Chelsea Triangle Space as part of the CapeFarewell show ‘Without Boats – Dreams Dry Up’ the week before we came here.
What develops from this most recent piece of my work and out of this place remains to be seen…
Text: ‘Jason Rhoades – Perfect World’ (2000) ed. by Zdenek Felix and published by Oktagon to coincide with a solo show at Deichtorhallen Hamburg
