Matt Kenyon Shows Two Pieces at FILE 2014
Matt Kenyon will be showing “Notepad” and “Supermajor” at FILE, the Electronic Language International Festival, in August. Kenyon’s “Tardigotchi” won first prize at the FILE Prix Lux in 2010.
Notepad
The Notepad is an act of protest and commemoration disguised as a stack of ordinary yellow legal pads. Each ruled line, when magnified, is revealed to be microprinted text enumerating the full names, dates, and locations of each Iraqi civilian death on record over the first three years of the Iraq War. A printed edition of 100 notepads, was covertly distributed to US representatives and senators, as a sort of Trojan horse, injecting transgressive data straight into the halls of power and memorializing it in official archives. SWAMP is now working on a new edition that takes into account the American incursion into Afghanistan; with the disclosure of confidential information by WikiLeaks.
http://www.swamp.nu/projects/notepad/
Supermajor
In the gallery a wire rack of vintage oil cans sits. One has a visible fissure out of which oil slowly flows, cascading onto the pedestal and the gallery floor. The only thing is, upon close inspection the oil isn’t flowing out of the can. Instead, oil appears to slowly flow, drop-by-drop, back into the can. At times the drops of oil seem to hover unsupported in mid-air. At other times, the drops are in the process of a reverse slow motion splash onto the pedestal
http://www.swamp.nu/projects/supermajor/