From September 13 – October 18, 2015, PARTICIPANT INC is proud to present A Smeary Spot, a solo exhibition by A.K. Burns including sculptural works and a multi-channel video installation by the same title, drawing on speculative fiction, theater, and documentary tactics. This episode was shot in two locations: on public lands in the deserts of southern Utah and inside a black box theater, where performers deliver recitations of appropriated and altered texts that compose a loose manifesto on b...
From September 13 – October 18, 2015, PARTICIPANT INC is proud to present A Smeary Spot, a solo exhibition by A.K. Burns including sculptural works and a multi-channel video installation by the same title, drawing on speculative fiction, theater, and documentary tactics. This episode was shot in two locations: on public lands in the deserts of southern Utah and inside a black box theater, where performers deliver recitations of appropriated and altered texts that compose a loose manifesto on being. A Smeary Spot is an entrance into a cycle of video works and exhibitions that will be collectively known as Negative Space.
The title A Smeary Spot, a reference to the sun, is borrowed from Johanna Russ. This dense concentration of heat and light, bright beyond our abilities to perceive, is always out of focus, out of grasp, yet permeating everywhere in every thing. An organizing principle of time, of place, of ego, it is powerful in its persistence. Sitting there, sinking, only to rise again. Hung above the line, the horizon, balancing between giving and taking too much. What potential emerges when we glance away from the source and settle into the blurry residue of the afterimage?
This is about orientation, a re-orientation, a speculative present. Another present will be another future. Inside this cinematic experience is a surreal narrative of bodies in transition — bodies that change, move, slip between, act and act out, delivering language and materially motivated gestures that add up to an offering, a set of possibilities. Among these bodies, the land, the water, the pile and the theater are not simply grounds, resources, waste or stages upon which actions occur. They are sprawling protagonists, who, like the sun — permeating and persistent — cast large shadows, and occupy most of the screen.
Negative space is a mutable matter — the between, under, an¬d around space. Positive space is the thing, the object of our desire, the subject of our attention. We might conclude that negative space is subordinate to its other, but if we shift our focus toward the formless, we see it is always becoming, always adaptable, always there even when the thing is gone.
A Smeary Spot was realized with the generous support and resources provided by Creative Capital, The Kitchen, collective address, Outpost Cuts and Burns Residency, Callicoon Fine Arts and PARTICIPANT INC, and in conjunction with performers niv Acosta, Nayland Blake, Grace Dunham, Jack Doroshow (aka Flawless Sabrina), Macauley Elmer, Marcelo Gutierrez, Katherine Hubbard, Lee Maida, Matana Roberts, Jen Rosenblit, Mariana Valencia, with an original score by Geo Wyeth and others.