Slip Sensor - Cell Projects

Slip Sensor

an exhibition in two parts with

Laura Buckley • Martin Fletcher Systems House • Ilana Halperin • Andy Jackson • Francesco Pedraglio • Maria Taniguchi • Adam Thompson

November 12th 2010- January 23rd 2011

The following paragraph is a re-imagining of Robert Smithson’s work ‘Asphalt Rundown’, 1969, perceived through the ‘Esper Machine’, a photo analysis tool, depicted in the film ‘Blade Runner’, directed by Ridley Scott, 1982.

'In a forgotten quarry a heavy goods vehicle is emptying it’s load, SLIP, an asphalt load that trickles down, a landslide, an imitation of the painter’s abstract drip…. SLIP Zoom in/Enhance 90%, (to take a closer look); crystalline fragments reflect and refract the light. SLIP Zoom in again/Enhance 34; a shiny cube like stone is migrating. Geometric form, at odds to it’s rounded neighbors, SLIP Track 45/Enhance, Stop/Move in/Stop: 14; miniscule slates, identical in appearance, modular entities, removed from their white-walled resting place, SLIP, asphalt, a recognition of our ancestors ideals, split into disparate parts. SLIP, discordant parts chaotically placed in a Perspex toy box ready for the taking, SLIP Pull back to original/De-enhance 230%: a cascade of moving ground, an unsteady platform, SLIP'. Give me a hard copy right there.’

This paragraph contains elements from the film ‘Blade Runner’ directed by Ridley Scott, 1982

The Esper Machine, a voice-controlled computer, analyses a photograph by revealing a three dimensional capture of an event enabling the viewer to zoom into a higher resolution image navigating and scrutinising surfaces and turning corners. As a premise for the exhibition, the above paragraph introduces elements of the works in ‘Sensorical Slip’ (Part I and Part II) through the context of Robert Smithson’s iconic work, Asphalt Rundown’, Rome 1969. Asphalt Rundown is analysed with the Esper’s mechanical precision, to try and piece together its component parts by digitally scanning the work using overlaid grids, as the viewer calls out commands and coordinates. Smithson’s approach to his vast entropic works was to develop a photographic practice, none of which dealt with traditional composition or conventional image making. 35mm slide transparencies reduced representation making the images themselves displacements. Sensorical SLIP loosely refers to the ‘Non-Site’ (an indoor earthwork) as a three dimensional logical picture that is abstract, yet it represents an actual site. The artists within this exhibition re-work and re-analyze the aesthetics left by this minimalist trajectory.

This exhibition will be accompanied by a newly published text by writer and independent curator Francesco Pedraglio. The text, a fictive narrative around the imagined existence of abstract objects, will entwine facts and fictions responding to the exhibition by presenting itself as a contribution of artwork to the show.

Francesco Pedraglio co founded FormContent with Caterina Riva and Pieternel Vermoortel in 2007. His practice now interlaces writing with curatorial and editorial projects, experimenting formats of narrativity with hybrid cross-posting between exhibition-making and publishing.

As a special evening event, the artist Ilana Halperin will present ‘Hand Held Lava’, which was performed at ‘Triple Canopy’, New York earlier this year. ‘Hand Held Lava’ is a collaborative performative lecture by volcanic archaeologist, Karen Holmberg, writer/curator, Andrew Patrizio and the artist, Halperin. The lecture focuses on human interaction with an ‘analog geologic event’ combining a volcanic narrative of historic and contemporary eruption footage. Halperin's practice, combines personal experience with scientific theories recording the places she has visited in a quest to understand geological phenomena. In 1999 Halperin heated up a tiny saucepan of milk in a 100 °C sulphur spring to make ‘Boiling Milk Solfataras’ Edinburgh based Ilana Halperin exhibited in‘Portscapes’. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam in 2010 and ‘An Entangled Bank’, Talbot Rice University of Edinburgh and ‘Experimental Geography’, The Albuquerque Museum, New Mexico in 2009. Solo exhibitions include ‘Physical Geology. (slow time), three solo projects. Artists Space, New York, ‘Alchemy Project’, Manchester Museum and ‘Towards Heilprin Land’, Doggerfisher, Edinburgh.