North Canada - English Electric
A retired worker habitually returns as an amateur photographer to the sites he was previously employed at - the Port and the Industrial Estate. Both now exist in liminal zones, at the de-regulated, toxic edges of the city. He’s been detained at the Port, detected by and recorded on CCTV. He’s about to be questioned about his activities, at which point a voice from the supernatural intervenes… A female ‘spirit voice' subsequently takes over the narration, enacting a role-reversal or possession ritual, as evidenced in the ancient mythological trope of ‘the return’ (see French Ethnologist Marc Augé in his 1998 essay ‘Oblivion’). She speaks in the ‘conditional progressive’ a dualistic tense that simultaneously engages with the past and the future. She digresses from the interrogation to ruminate over the optical phenomenon that is stereoscopy, reflecting upon a history of distractive banalities – of ‘home entertainment’, virtual tourism, 3D crazes… 'North Canada - English Electric' has been exhibited at: 2010Liverpool Art Prize UK (Winner)2010-11Northern Art Prize, Leeds UK On-line at: apengine.org/2011/01/david-jacques/2012ShanghART Gallery, Shanghai China2014On-line at: photomediationsmachine.net/2014/03/29/north-canada-english-electric/On-line at: metamute.org/editorial/articles/liverpools-docks-dust-and-dirt 2018SKLAD, Plovidiv, Bulgaria 'Operaismo Naturale: Ecology of the Event' (group)North Canada - English Electric from David Jacques on Vimeo. |