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The
and assorted orphans
An Approach to the Core
Before you, the Reader, begin to digest this — this text, here — certainobservations about operating principles must be articulated and warningsissued.Most importantly, you will need to be advised and forewarned on the subjectof the Core. You will probably have some knowledge of the Core already,since your curiosity regarding the artist Elizabeth Price's video work
USER GROUP DISCO (The Hall of Sculptures)
(2009) has prompted you to broachthis text. You may already have viewed the work — more than once, it ishoped! — or maybe are planning your visit to see it. You may also have seenPrice's preceding, four-minute-long video
WELCOME (The Atrium)
(2008), the'lobby' through which a form of entry may be gained to
USER GROUP DISCO
and the starting point of Price's current,
projectdedicated to the exploration and analysis of
the New Ruined Institute.
Therefore you anticipate certain flows of information, concerning (for instance)Price's work material, her technical methods and structures, her decisionprocess and strategy; even, potentially, some discussion of
. You may positively
;however, we must caution you regarding the
and the possibility of
that attends
the plunge down into the
For the Core is not a
, a hidden formula, or some secret thatmay be unmasked in the work's closing moments. You will probablyexperience it, initially at least, as a
delay, in the most general way possible — not so much in the different meanings which delay can take, but rather in their indecisive reunion .
For the Core is not something that may directly be seen orshown. Despite the apparent
authority
of Price's image-world: its sleeklyseductive monochromatic effects, its mesmerising graphic orchestration, inwhich streams of text and tantalising glimpses of moving objects execute acomplex, enigmatic counterpoint; despite the felicity with which the video'ssoundtrack converges with and diverges from the forms, textures, materialsand rhythms showing on the screen — despite this lustrous, steely greyrichness, this seemingly lavish excess of visuality, this
, the Core is not, finally, made manifest on screen.No!
USER GROUP DISCO’s
visual space
is only deceptively
. We might go so far as to say that here,approaching the Core,
We
understand it to be
. We feel it morethan we see it, like
as it streamsthrough to us via auditory, proprioceptive and narrative as well as visualchannels. We imagine it to be
;but this is simply a symptomatic response to its real character:
, it is
. Its
simultaneously inspires
. And we know it contains
: Price herself warns as much.Come closer to the edge.
Absorb the messages as they stream past, flaringbrightly then vanishing, clicking into view letter by letter, or springing onto thescreen, capitalised, like a shout, a red alert! Listen to the pulsing, vibrant,threatening music; three themes, each one more uplifting, insistent andcoercive than the last. The
not least Jem Noble, has done its job.These communications are not univocal but a chorus
:
the subject of the Coreis
.It speaks in a multitude oftongues. It is fluent in politics, philosophy and economics, in poetry, literatureand
. It mimics the voices of the celebrated, the respected,the infamous and the insignificant: Poe, Borges, Melville and Adorno; 1980sNorwegian popsters a-ha, or the distinguished Cleghorn Professor ofManagement Studies, Henry Mintzberg. Nothing is held sacred.
comes an array of objects not limited to, and possiblyresembling, but not identical with:a fibre-optic lampAleksandr Rodchenko, Shukhov Tower(b/w photograph, 1929)the Petsafe electronic pet feeder for your small dog or catLászló Moholy-Nagy's Light-Space Modulator of 1930a manually-powered spherical drying deviceAuguste Rodin's Danaide, 1885, and sundry other studies of the female nudea plug-in facial spa — a great way to take care of your skina Barbara Kruger photo-text work, 1989Man Ray: a rayogram made using an electric whisk, 1918a plastic hubcapa ceramic vase manufactured in the German Democratic Republic, circa 1979a chromed executive desk toy, a fun stress reliever! (Rocking motion)an object of African origin found by a Surrealist in a flea market in 1937an artificial leghigh-quality satin-nickel finish goosenecksa Batchelor, or Desiring, Machine and variousMalic Mouldsa chocolate fountainthe Masters Golf Putting Machine Putt Returner (£8.47 exc. VAT)
Has Price chosen these artefacts or have they chosen Price? We cannot say.
Simply observe them asthey swoop and slide past, both the texts and the objects. Watch how thetexts become objects, the objects texts. We are advised that all of this hailsfrom the past,
from the terrible Twentieth Century
, yet in USER GROUPDISCO it seems that
as in outlines and skeletons; all the past is somehow grown dim .The pile of debris grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress .
An indecipherable, urgentmessage in some variant of Morse Code circles the rim of a ceramic teacup;
another orphan
, adrift, spinning fleetingly before our eyes:
However, we digress. You will now note how the
technostructure
activates the
decision processes;
the
work material
is drawn into the vortex. Someelements are preserved; they resurface relatively intact. Others sinkirretrievably. Price's own production is no exception. No! Over fifty hours ofvideo footage (the result of hundreds of hours of mostly solitary work,positioning, lighting, locating, suspending, reversing, rotating, inverting,examining and re-examining, shooting and re-shooting) has been cut,processed and machined into place,
, toproduce User Group Disco's final fourteen-minute timespan.Some have hinted that the Core is an
apocalypse
. Caught in its centrifuge,
what everything is for, changes
. Might we state, instead, that the Core is arepository of both distillation and ruin? That in it we may determine thepresence of both essence and debris, but that — if
— both may be reclassifiedas one and the same? This may be a
liberation
: what once was indispensableis rendered worthless junk, no longer demanding preservation, curatorship,
polishing
or
taxonomic display
. Or it may be a curse: what once wasdisposable is rendered sovereign and transcendent — it is re-categorised,glossed, appreciated, cherished, enshrined, exalted — it enslaves!But it will be clear by now that the Core goes beyond all such attempts atdescription; it absorbs these
.E
it demands
It is
It practices
.
An
it neither builds nor creates
that can be
"explained in translation"
.Its images
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