Sunday, April 18, 2010

Project for an Archive of the Future Anterior (@ Harriet)


here
I could not imagine a more auspicious person to collaborate on this project with than Premnath, who is currently working on an installation which deals with the ways that monuments project symbolic values and retroactive cultural narratives. Visiting Premnath’s studio a few weeks ago in Sunset Park, Bklyn, upon entering the studio I immediately encountered a statue in the center of the room, covered by packaging materials bound in rope and standing on a wooden crate. Around the center of the room were propped mirrored sign boards upon which images of rope and newspaper photographs were silkscreened. In other incarnations of Premnath’s “monument,” the staue is surrounded by blank sign-boards, as though a particular political content were erased (vanished? forgotten?) or more likely yet-to-be-inscribed. In Premnath’s work, one always moves among multiple durations, historical contexts, and memory circuits, all of which potentialize the present through aesthetic-critical encounter.

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