SEBarnet

A day of continual irritation for myself*
SE Barnet, co-organized with Sally Morfill

7 December – 15 December 2013
Preview: Friday 6 December 6-9pm

There will be an Open Conversation on 7 December from 3pm

Five Years Gallery, 66 Regent Studios, 8 Andrews Road, London, E8 4QN
http://www.fiveyears.org.uk/

The second in a series of two exhibitions on making marks and meaning, offering a look at an early complicit engagement with surveillance and diaristic self-exposure, and its resultant surfeit material.

A day of continual irritation for myself* presents a filmed performance of team proof-reading based on materials from the Mass Observation archive. Part of a larger project involving a number of activities, (from extensive transcription to the creation of drawings, through scripts for performance and film to daily tweets) it employs these materials towards re-appropriation and détournement. The project offers a look at an early complicit engagement with surveillance and diaristic self-exposure, with its resultant surfeit material.

This second in a series of two exhibitions on making marks and meaning, follows on from the transcribing, copy-editing and proof-reading performative activity begun during the exhibition General title given by myself at Five Years Gallery in July 2013. Here, the proof-readers are enacted by Mexican artist Fernando León-Guiu and writer France León. The pair are based on a couple well known throughout the publishing world for their facility and formality.

The starting point for all this activity comes from the Day Surveys of 1937-1939 from the Mass Observation archive. This British movement begun in the early 20thcentury, aimed to create ‘an anthropology of ourselves’ by recording everyday life in Britain through a panel of untrained volunteer observers who either maintained diaries or replied to open-ended questionnaires. These observers acted as recorders, attempting to capture the details of their own everyday lives and the lives of those around them.

* This line of text comes from the Day Survey of an unidentified contributor of 12th March, 1937

Open Conversation

In response to questions raised by Marking Language, currently at the Drawing Room, and General title given by myself, at Five Years last July 2013, Barnet and Morfill offer an open Conversation engaged with the look of words and the meaning of marks.

Please join artist/organizers SE Barnet and Sally Morfill in an Open Conversation at Five Years Gallery on Saturday 7 December from 3pm.