#73: Jeremy Shaw

Jeremy Shaw works in a variety of media to explore altered states and the cultural and scientific practices that aspire to map transcendental experience. Often combining and amplifying strategies from the realms of conceptual art, ethnographic film, music video, mystical and scientific research, Shaw proposes a post-documentary space in which disparate ideals, belief-systems and narration are put into crisis.

Introduction to The Memory Personality, 2012, 12:36 min
Part clandestine guided-hypnosis tape, part pseudo-psychoanalytical video questionnaire, Introduction to The Memory Personality sucks the viewer into a persuasive single-point-perspective on human consciousness and memory. Created specifically for the One on One exhibition at KW, Berlin, in 2012, (in which all works were made to only be viewed by one person at a time), the video’s VHS aesthetic serves as a leveling platform for an alchemical mix of neuroscience, motion-graphics, first-person POV, mind manipulation techniques, found footage collages and ominous narration recalling vague moments from your real or imagined past. Introduction to The Memory Personality assumes the role of thrift shop dollar-bin curio brought home, viewed, and lodged permanently somewhere in the back of your psyche.

Quickeners, 2014, 36:54 min
Set 500 years in the future, Quickeners tells the story of Human Atavism Syndrome (H.A.S.), an obscure disorder afflicting a tiny portion of the Quantum Human population to desire and feel as their Human Being predecessors once did. A species wirelessly interconnected to The Hive, Quantum Humans have evolved to operate solely on pure rational thought and they have achieved immortality. Quickeners is set against a cinéma vérité aesthetic, reworking archival documentary footage from a gathering of Pentecostal Christian snake handlers to illustrate the story. As the film unfolds, an authoritative Quantum Human narrator comments on what we witness: indecipherable testimonials, sermons, songs, prayers, convulsive dancing, speaking-in-tongues, serpent handling, and ecstatic states that Quantum Humans define as “Quickening”.

 

Jeremy Shaw (b. 1977 in North Vancouver, Canada) has had solo exhibitions at MoMA PS1, US, Schinkel Pavillon, DE, and MOCCA, CA, and been featured in group exhibitions at Stedelijk Museum, NE, KW Institute for Contemporary Art, DE, and Palais de Tokyo, FR. He is represented by KÖNIG GALERIE, Berlin.

Jeremy Shaw’s web site: www.jeremyshaw.net