Wake me up when it's over

Craighead, A. and Thomson, J. 2017. Wake me up when it's over. Young Projects Gallery, Pacific Design Centre, West Hollywood, LA 27 Jan - 30 Apr 2017

CreatorsCraighead, A. and Thomson, J.
Description

Young Projects is pleased to present Wake Me Up When It’s Over by the UK duo, Thomson & Craighead, who have shown extensively at galleries, museums and film-festivals worldwide. The exhibition will feature nearly a dozen works spanning the years 1996-2016, thereby presenting an in-depth look into the couple’s practice and methodologies.

Read the recent feature about Thomson & Craighead in the New Yorker

For the better part of the past two decades Jon Thomson and Alison Craighead have been “digging deep,” as curator Marc Garrett once described their practice, “into the algorithmic phenomena of our networked society; its conditions and protocols (architecture of the Internet) and the non-ending terror of the spectacle as a mediated life.”

In the process they've employed web cams, data feeds, networks, movies, images, sound and text in their many installations, videos and art-objects--often with a wide array of art-historical reference points, including 1960s systems art, 1970s structuralist film-making, and the compositional experiments of the literature group, Oulipo.

Of course, given their interest in the ever-shifting world of the digital, their work can also be as sardonic and menacing as our daily news feed might suggest. Terrorism, dystopia, the apocalypse, the loss of privacy, police states, political apathy, radioactive waste, fear mongering and the self-help industry are common targets for the artists. However, in each case, such works can also convey a wry sense-of-humor and a well-honed critical distance. Apocalypse 2016 for instance, (pictured above), which will be featured in Wake Me Up When It’s Over, is a professionally made perfume that captures the odor of the ‘end of times’ as described in the Book of Revelation. "[It's] the nasal equivalent of a subsonic frequency," wrote critic Nell Frizzell after his encounter with the scent. [It's] doom, in sprayable, wearable, purchasable form.”

Other writers, such as Eddy Frankel, have written similarly of Thomson & Craighead. “There’s a chance you’ll feel like [the artists] have a direct line into your neuroses,” he wrote upon exiting one of their exhibitions; “or at the least have been monitoring your emails or something, because it all taps so perfectly into contemporary anxiety. It’s almost too real. This is aggressive, angsty art that really sticks in your throat.”

Perhaps, but one would also be hard-pressed to overlook the obvious compassion and implicit optimism that is also apparent in much of their work. Video-based projects such as Belief, A Short Film About War, and Help Yourself for example, give tactile form to an astonishing array of anonymous, disembodied voices that pervade the internet—voices that often convey the alienation, loneliness and quiet supplication that tends to dominate online life. By doing so, the artists not only celebrate and delight in the so-called 'promise' of technology, but “tell us about a networked society's gaze at its mediated self,” as Garrett has written. For writers such as Baudrillard, Postman and Eco that kind of self-reflexiveness was the very definition of hyperreality, which they dubbed the information age. “But,” as Garrett continues, “if we add a contemporary flavor to what hyperreality looks like now in a networked society we come up with hyper-mediality.”

Wake Me Up When It’s Over is just that: a taste of hyper-mediality in all its strange, woeful and endlessly beguiling glory.

KeywordsSolo Show, LA, Paul Young, Thomson & Craighead,
Year2017
Files
Files
Files
Web address (URL)http://www.youngprojectsgallery.com/thomson-craighead

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Never Odd or Even
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Thomson, J. and Craighead, A. 2012. Belief. InSpace Gallery, Edinburgh 21st June - 1st July 2012

Short Film about War
Thomson, J. and Craighead, A. 2010. Short Film about War. Edith Russ Site for Media Art, Oldenburg, Germany 10 Jun - 29 August

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Thomson, J. and Craighead, A. 2010. London Wall. United Kingdom 28 May - 05 Sep 2010

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Thomson, J. and Craighead, A. 2009. Several Interruptions: Web commission for the relaunch of The Arts Council of England website.

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Thomson, J. and Craighead, A. 2009. Horizon & BEACON. Dundee Contemporary Arts, United Kingdom 17 Jan - 08 Mar 2009

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Thomson, J. and Craighead, A. 2008. Unprepared piano. Eyebeam NY 25 Sep - 25 Oct 2008

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Thomson, J. and Craighead, A. 2008. Thomson-Craighead at Studion. Stockholm, Sweden 02 - 30 Oct 2008

My contacts; Signals; Flat Earth
Thomson, J. and Craighead, A. 2008. My contacts; Signals; Flat Earth. Cube Exhibition 01 May 2008

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Thomson, J. and Craighead, A. 2008. Flat Earth. Newcastle 28 Feb 2008

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Thomson, J. and Craighead, A. 2008. Decorative news feeds; beacon. Moderna Museet, Stockholm 02 - 30 Oct 2008

Decorative news feeds
Thomson, J. and Craighead, A. 2008. Decorative news feeds.

Beacon
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Short films about flying
Thomson, J. and Craighead, A. 2007. Short films about flying. Laboral Art and Industrial Creation Centre, Gijon, Spain 30 Mar - 30 Jun 2007

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Thomson, J. and Craighead, A. 2005. Beacon. Tate Modern, London 25 May - 05 Jul 2005

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Thomson, J. and Craighead, A. 2001. e-poltergeist. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 03 Mar - 08 Jul 2001

CNN Interactive just got more interactive
Thomson, J. and Craighead, A. 2001. CNN Interactive just got more interactive. Tate Britain, London 06 Mar - 03 Jun 2001

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