Group Show: By Night With Torch and Spear
The exhibition takes its title from a Joseph Cornell film of the same name. It is a collage of workers in industrial settings, title cards made illegible and recontexualized from silent film, clips of vague historic and ethnographic fetishes, and oddly exposed images of insects. It is an extraction--a pulling from the dirt of American prosperity its primal liquids in order to turn them into strange fuel. Extraction--a word which either brings to mind the processes by which organic matter is taken, to be then turned into chemical energy, or precision operations necessary for the recovery of key human assets--is a crucial tool of global order. Alchemy is a modern fact, and its products are worth many more sums than gold. Cornell's extraction is one that happens from a distance and with amusement, and as we watch the footage of molten metal being poured, moving abruptly from sepia to neon, we loose any sense of real documentation or purpose. A child, wrapped in
comfort and looking on with wonder, does not stop to think if these workers are being properly paid. Processes are turned into fanciful toys, and work becomes alien. The insects in the film become comparatively engorged while their bodies still perform the functions of minuscule slaves, captivated in a delirium of entertainment. The motions are easy enough, and at this point, well rehearsed.
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The exhibition takes its title from a Joseph Cornell film of the same name. It is a collage of workers in industrial settings, title cards made illegible and recontexualized from silent film, clips of vague historic and ethnographic fetishes, and oddly exposed images of insects. It is an extraction--a pulling from the dirt of American prosperity its primal liquids in order to turn them into strange fuel. Extraction--a word which either brings to mind the processes by which organic matter is taken, to be then turned into chemical energy, or precision operations necessary for the recovery of key human assets--is a crucial tool of global order. Alchemy is a modern fact, and its products are worth many more sums than gold. Cornell's extraction is one that happens from a distance and with amusement, and as we watch the footage of molten metal being poured, moving abruptly from sepia to neon, we loose any sense of real documentation or purpose. A child, wrapped in
comfort and looking on with wonder, does not stop to think if these workers are being properly paid. Processes are turned into fanciful toys, and work becomes alien. The insects in the film become comparatively engorged while their bodies still perform the functions of minuscule slaves, captivated in a delirium of entertainment. The motions are easy enough, and at this point, well rehearsed.
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