Mark Aerial Waller
Welcome to the Association Area

Sunday 1 June 2014
10:00—17:00

Gallery 1, Horsebridge Arts Centre

Mark Aerial Waller is an artist based in London. His practice, which encompasses video, sculpture, and constructed situations, engages a spectrum of subjects and subjectivities ranging from the biochemical mechanisms that shape our social interactions to nuclear contract workers in the UK. He is the founder of The Wayward Canon (2001-onwards), a platform for event-based interventions in cinematic practices.

Welcome to the Association Area presents new and classic artists’ film and video alongside science fiction tv, video sharing and digital photography to explore the disjunctures that distance us, then connect us to contemporary art. We as spectators are positioned at some distance from these works, until the artists in this programme slowly make it possible for our entry. At some point a moment of recognition and interpretation can be made, so what was once distant becomes part of our own subjectivity. We then belong to it, no longer the same as we once were.

Central to the programme is a performance to camera by video sharer, Wet Canuck. His output, spanning the ten-year history of internet video streaming, has led to a minimal and consistent set of performance videos. The performer slowly lowers himself into water, allowing time between each slight movement for the water to seep further into his clothing, until finally he is fully submerged. His hedonistic relation to own body in the physical world is heightened only by his recognition of the camera and of us watching him.

This formalism is reflected in early video works by Vito Acconci and VALIE EXPORT, which question the adaptation of the body to its cultural environment. The social position of the body is determined through symbolic space. The relation between viewer and object are expanded further in Simon Martin’s Carlton (2006) where the viewer is prompted to challenge their assumptions in relation to an iconic bookshelf, demanding that spectator find associations. This relationship to audience is further explored through the photographic work of Eva Stenram where a physical encounter with landscape is veiled by artificial imagery, yet the essence of the act remains.

The programme of films will run for approx 1 hour on a loop. Visit at any point during opening times. There is a talk associated with this programme on 7 June at 4pm. More details here.