single channel digital video
52 mins
2007
Commissioned for the Singapore Art Show 2007 as part of Word of Mouth curated by Heman Chong, a video project using Chris Marker’s ‘Sans Soleil’ as a springboard for exploring notions of time, place and memory.
The artist responded with an intimate, personal piece that meditated on the challenges of terrorism and immigration faced by the city of London, his then adoptive home.
"52" is a collection of 52 minutes of 'silence' in remembrance of the 52 victims of the 7 July 2005 terrorist bombings that hit London's public transport system during the morning rush hour.
The starting point for the piece was a list of names of the victims that the artist kept on his wall of his studio, remarkable for its range of ethnicities, resulting from a random though fateful selection from the London population.
[click here to see list of names
]
Over several Sundays leading to the 2nd anniversary of the 7/7 bombings, the artist wandered around the near empty streets of the City of London - the heart of the financial centre surrounded by architectural monuments from past and present epochs that demonstrate London's dominance in the capitalist world - and captured 52 individual minutes of 'silence' on video.
Referencing John Cage's piece 4'33" (consisting of 4 minutes and 33 seconds of apparent silence) and the British post apocalyptic science-fiction horror film 28 Days Later directed by Danny Boyle (notable for its images of a deserted London) the 52 minutes of video 'nothingness' collected by the artist from morning to dusk include an array of urban and architectural white noise such as traffic and electrical humming of the buildings, pigeons landing in the middle of the street, wandering tourists or the roar of a passing aeroplane.
Exhibited at Word of Mouth curated by Heman Chong as part of Curating Lab, Singapore Art Show 2007.
[weblink]
