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Agency of Singular Investigations
(CCI Fabrika)
Moscow
2015
Agency of Singular Investigations
(CCI Fabrika)
Moscow
2015
THIRD PARTY. 2015.
The Agency of Singular Investigations presents a new video work by JJ Johnson “Third Party” for the second iteration of ongoing Program of specialized observations of everyday life. The artist is drawn to the problematics of construction of subjectivity in a context of global 'semiocapitalism' and developing networks of communication. In this fractal world woven by way of distribution of images, sensations and meanings, barriers between internal and external become expressible only by means such as cuts, intervals and gaps between system and subject.
The method, adequate to such an environment is a sociological description that tracks the chains of signs up and down the lines of forces of "politeconomical' efficiency. Layers, strata, cells, networks and abstractions gain materiality, rhyming and conflicting with each other. Fragments of everyday life show the image of the character, one of the many millions of inhabitants of liquid modernity', connected to the global machinery of production and consumption by a plurality of filaments. The more documentary the camera is, the deeper is the dive into the network of signs from which everyday reality weaves itself. Here is a close up of its fabric - symbolic threads, loops, and knots are conjugated in patterns, dissipate in waves, like gestures and glances at parties, or mass ornaments of movements in gyms.
In the flickering between contexts, between leisure and work, between East and West, between script and event, arises a perforated and composite landscape of the world system of global capitalism. The tension between the global and the local, the utopian impulse and social structure, political expectations and aesthetic experience - seemingly reduces to a minimum the distance between character and spectator. Who is not familiar with this condition: to be a part of the system, but not to belong to it, to enjoy the smooth operation of semiotic machines, at the same time feeling an unimprovable finitude?
THIRD PARTY. 2015.
The Agency of Singular Investigations presents a new video work by JJ Johnson “Third Party” for the second iteration of ongoing Program of specialized observations of everyday life. The artist is drawn to the problematics of construction of subjectivity in a context of global 'semiocapitalism' and developing networks of communication. In this fractal world woven by way of distribution of images, sensations and meanings, barriers between internal and external become expressible only by means such as cuts, intervals and gaps between system and subject.
The method, adequate to such an environment is a sociological description that tracks the chains of signs up and down the lines of forces of "politeconomical' efficiency. Layers, strata, cells, networks and abstractions gain materiality, rhyming and conflicting with each other. Fragments of everyday life show the image of the character, one of the many millions of inhabitants of liquid modernity', connected to the global machinery of production and consumption by a plurality of filaments. The more documentary the camera is, the deeper is the dive into the network of signs from which everyday reality weaves itself. Here is a close up of its fabric - symbolic threads, loops, and knots are conjugated in patterns, dissipate in waves, like gestures and glances at parties, or mass ornaments of movements in gyms.
In the flickering between contexts, between leisure and work, between East and West, between script and event, arises a perforated and composite landscape of the world system of global capitalism. The tension between the global and the local, the utopian impulse and social structure, political expectations and aesthetic experience - seemingly reduces to a minimum the distance between character and spectator. Who is not familiar with this condition: to be a part of the system, but not to belong to it, to enjoy the smooth operation of semiotic machines, at the same time feeling an unimprovable finitude?
Third Party
HD video, 15 minutes
P. Squatting
Polymer clay, metal armature, 50 x 40 x 40 cm
Expats, diplomats and educated young people mingle at a party held by Belgian IT workers in the expanding and affluent colonies of South New Delhi in the final scenes of Third Party by Johnson. The location is a sprawling megacity- a landscape of global economy where cheap labour comes in the form of a growing population of aspiring middle class youth.
This is the backdrop against which we meet a male protagonist who inhabits a series of global positions and dilemmas. His desire to improve himself manifests in a highly social and active leisure life including a safari retreat and cross-fit training. His intentions hint at a lifestyle in which the freedom and responsibility of the individual is prized, alongside a desire to be closer to the surface of the earth and to nature. Johnson's anthropological camera watches him pacing, squatting, and alertly observing his surroundings like an animal in a nature documentary against daily life in Delhi.
The title, Third Party, explicitly reflects the ways in which the work performs a form of outsourcing. A Bollywood production unit from Noida, a huge development on the outskirts of Delhi, is enlisted, delegating production and incorporating musical numbers which are both plot drivers and also indulgences for the audience and cast alike. A third party is also an agent which witnesses a situation and meditates it. As Johnson presents the implications of the life of this man and his place in the world, it implicates their own set of relationships to the geographies, economies and social groups around them.
Alongside the video Johnson presents P. Squatting, a new sculptural work which takes the form of a fleshy toned half sized figurine of a man resembling the film's protagonist. His posture is poised precisely between being able to hold himself and losing his balance. His form echoes the gestures in the film's labour, leisure and sport, alongside those that capture a more primal humanity. He is neither a souvenir nor a prop, but instead a kind of cultural hybrid- an image of a man keeping his balance caught between cultures and across many eras. He is the quintessential human trying to hold things together in his environment.
Third Party
HD video, 15 minutes
P. Squatting
Polymer clay, metal armature, 50 x 40 x 40 cm
Expats, diplomats and educated young people mingle at a party held by Belgian IT workers in the expanding and affluent colonies of South New Delhi in the final scenes of Third Party by Johnson. The location is a sprawling megacity- a landscape of global economy where cheap labour comes in the form of a growing population of aspiring middle class youth.
This is the backdrop against which we meet a male protagonist who inhabits a series of global positions and dilemmas. His desire to improve himself manifests in a highly social and active leisure life including a safari retreat and cross-fit training. His intentions hint at a lifestyle in which the freedom and responsibility of the individual is prized, alongside a desire to be closer to the surface of the earth and to nature. Johnson's anthropological camera watches him pacing, squatting, and alertly observing his surroundings like an animal in a nature documentary against daily life in Delhi.
The title, Third Party, explicitly reflects the ways in which the work performs a form of outsourcing. A Bollywood production unit from Noida, a huge development on the outskirts of Delhi, is enlisted, delegating production and incorporating musical numbers which are both plot drivers and also indulgences for the audience and cast alike. A third party is also an agent which witnesses a situation and meditates it. As Johnson presents the implications of the life of this man and his place in the world, it implicates their own set of relationships to the geographies, economies and social groups around them.
Alongside the video Johnson presents P. Squatting, a new sculptural work which takes the form of a fleshy toned half sized figurine of a man resembling the film's protagonist. His posture is poised precisely between being able to hold himself and losing his balance. His form echoes the gestures in the film's labour, leisure and sport, alongside those that capture a more primal humanity. He is neither a souvenir nor a prop, but instead a kind of cultural hybrid- an image of a man keeping his balance caught between cultures and across many eras. He is the quintessential human trying to hold things together in his environment.
World Premiere: 'Third Party ASI', CCI Fabrika, Moscow, 2015