Lives on Wire
ICA, London, June 2015
Also: Hawser/ Hofer
Mumok, Vienna, March 04, 2016
The Cinema Organ or Theatre Organ was a type of pipe organ created to musically accompany the first silent films of the twentieth century. Only temporarily in vogue, it was supplanted by the rise of "talkies" (films with incorporated sound) come the 1930s. This two-part body of work considers it as a technological waypoint; a corpus of mechanic, electric, and hydraulic systems.
The listed sites in which the organs are immovably interred are now two modern shopping centres, specifically Burberry and Wannamaker shops. Through a collection of film and fragmentary sculptures the work examines a directional clash: the incongruity of this instrument within the infrastructure of this manipulated consumer environment. The operations of purchase and exchange are pitted against the organ’s former fole - expelling light and music to create an integrated spectacle for the silent film era.
1. Waypoint - intermediary point or place in a path of travel.