[aha] Closed Circuit by Rod Dickinson at Aksioma Project Space

[Aksioma]

Aksioma -- Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, kindly invite you 
to the lecture and exhibition opening:

*Rod Dickinson *in collaboration with Steve Rushton
/*Closed Circuit*/
/Video installation/
www.aksioma.org/closed_circuit 
<http://www.aksioma.org/closed_circuit/index.html>

*Aksioma | Project Space*
Komenskega 18, Ljubljana, Slovenia
7 -- 28 September 2011

*Lecture and exhibition opening: Wednesday, 7 September 2011* *at 20:00*

----------*

* *'Closed Circuit' *
*by Rod Dickinson in collaboration with Steve Rushton*

Closed Circuit is a new video installation by Rod Dickinson in 
collaboration with Steve Rushton.

Set in a meticulously constructed press conference environment, two 
actors deliver a simulated government briefing.

The script of Closed Circuit was written in collaboration with writer 
Steve Rushton, and is composed solely of fragments of press statements 
and speeches delivered since the Cold War. The script focuses on the way 
in which similar declarations have been used by numerous governments - 
across continents and spanning the ideological divide - to declare and 
maintain states of crisis and emergency.

The fragments are woven together irrespective of context and date - the 
only change to the original material is to remove any specific mention 
of people, places and dates. Consequently, the who, what, where, when, 
why and how are removed from the spoken text.

The viewer is drawn into the speech by the seamless and forceful 
delivery of the actors, whilst the documentary sources of the script are 
revealed simultaneously on two presidential style autocues which display 
the scrolling script of the speech and expose it's repetitive, 
fragmentary and modular structure.

The political speech and government press briefing are long-established 
tools for the management of crises, emergencies and conflict in 
democratic societies. Whether used as a mechanism propagating government 
policy or for raising a nation's morale, the speech and press briefing 
are tried-and-trusted strategies from which politics is staged.

Since the beginning of the televisual age, the government briefing has 
become locked into the circuitry of television and real time media. Just 
as the crisis is always in the present, the live-ness of television 
calls the present forward and this in turn shapes political and social 
reality.

The video installation /Closed Circuit/derives from the performance, 
co-produced by the institute Aksioma and the institute Bunker, which was 
staged as part of the international festival Mladi levi in August 2010.


*ABOUT THE AUTHORS*

*Rod Dickinson's*work explores ideas of belief and social control. Using 
detailed research into moments of the past and present, he has made a 
series of meticulously re-enacted events that represent both the 
mechanisms that enable belief, and the social systems that underpin much 
human behaviour. His previous works include a recreation of Stanley 
Milgram's infamous 1961 social psychology experiment Obedience to 
Authority (The Milgram Re-enactment, 2002), and a recreation of the 
media surrounding a bomb attack on Greenwich Observatory in 1894 
(Greenwich Degree Zero, 2006).

*Steve Rushton*is a writer and editor based in Rotterdam. Rushton's 
publications include /Experience, Memory, Re-enactment/, 2005 
(co-editor); /The Milgram Re-enactment/, 2003 (editor). He writes essays 
and stories for artists' publications and contributes regularly to 
/DotDotDot/. Recent projects include the exhibition /After Neurath: Like 
Sailors on the Open Sea/, Stroom, The Hague, 2006-07. He is a co-founder 
of the research group /Signal: Noise/, which investigates the prevalence 
of notions of feedback in contemporary culture.


*Production: *Aksioma --Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana, 2011
_www.aksioma.org <http://www.aksioma.org/>_

Artistic director: Janez Jans(a
Executive producer: Marcela Okretic(
Public relations: Mojca Zupanic(
Technical support: Valter Udovic(ic'
Assistants: Anz(e Grm, Sonja Grdina


*Supported by the University of the West of England, the Ministry of 
Culture of the Republic of Slovenia and the Municipality of Ljubljana.*
*Sponsor: *Datacenter d.o.o.
*Thanks: *Kapelica gallery, Moderna galerija



Contact:
Marcela Okretic(, 041 250 830, aksioma4 at siol.net
*Aksioma | Institute for Contemporary Art, Ljubljana*
Neubergerjeva 25, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
tel.: + 386 -- (0)590 - 54360
_www.aksioma.org <http://www.aksioma.org/>_

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