Feedback Session at the Galleria

Feedback Session at Galleria for the Premix show.

The feedback session consisted of a meat tray, smoke machine and this video. It was very difficult to make because watching video of a projection of itself and making microphone whine seems self indulgent and annoying. Watching it repeatedly seems even more self indulgent and annoying. There is a point where feedback becomes only about itself and the point of origin, rather than any external stimulus which it claims to seek to examine. When I started making the feedback I was writing sentences about the institutionalisation of critique of institutional critique or something... there was a sentence with five repetitions of the phrase 'institutional critique'! In the same way, a projection of a projection of a video of a projection or a captured whine from a speaker picked up by a microphone reaching some resonating vibration ends up creating a sense of snakes eating their own tails.

The video was cut down and down to try and maintain some interest in the phenomena of feedback but this may have been at the expense of drawing out the agony of time spent in a narcissistic vortex of self reflexivity. Still, nine minutes and forty seconds is a relatively long time on youtube and much longer than the standard eight seconds or so a busy passerby might offer an artwork. The time is a compromise. The time is a bit further than I could push my tolerance for feedback, or rather a lot further because it might be the worst I cringe watching things I've made. Then, it might be doing it's job as feedback on feedback. *shudder*

The projection in the Galleria space was viewed by a select team of elite folks. Across the smoke and darkness I tried to see their expressions... when I wasn't gazing close up at the wall and fretting that the audio - playing from a different source to the contrary projector - was out of sync. At certain agonising points I saw smiling and during the ending I heard some sounds of chuckling. Afterwards the people were still talking to me in a friendly way so I can't have offended them very badly for making such a thing that I can't watch it.