SCOTT KIERNAN - ARTIST STATEMENT

Born:  New York

Resides:  California

REVIEW

"Memory Holes (Random Access) v. 1 and 2", 2008 Scott Kiernan

Camera: Paris Mancini

29 x 42" Fuji Crystal Archive on 1/4 " plexi with diebond backing

Edition: Singular plus 5 Unmounted Artist Proofs Images (also printed as 4 x 5' adhesive vinyl subway advertisement as installed in NYC subway between 7th and 8th Avenue at 42nd St.)

"Memory Holes v.1, and v.2" are from a larger body of work, across various media, which draws a parallel between the compression and "reformatting" of memory in a silicon chip and in a a human "memory" and consciousness. These specific images are from series of performative gestures throughout New York City (shown in May 2008 for a Berlin exhibition entitled "Urban Space") in which "Memory Holes v. 1" was reinserted back into the subway tunnel in which it was shot, as covert subway advertising. It then acts as a prop in a ensuing video shot on site, in which the artist/protagonist will pass by his own image in a series of "strange loop" generating actions. 

The imagery in both works uses the mirror (as in the glass in storefronts, subway cars or a passing strangers eyes etc) as a simultaneous exaltation, warping, and obliteration of memory extending it to the self-conscious, yet frenetic, urban experience.

A mirror reflection instantly collides past, present and future in one gaze. There is the past the viewer brings through pre-conception, and perceived "self-image", the present that changes before their very eyes through refracting light waves, and the future of the elusive "tomorrow" and the momento mori of eventual death.

The urban experience is also built on a convergence of past, present and future. One is simultaneously confronted with a city's history (far and recent, traumatic and triumphant, actual and folkloric), and it's ever changing and chaotic present which bleeds into its projected future (gentrification, development). With this fragmenting of "time", how can one place or perceive one's self? How can one not feel anonymous or as a turning cog in a market economy machination? The irony of this exists profoundly in urban marketing strategies; both in the advertising content itself and its proliferation. A repetition of "self-conscious" images redirect this "self-seeking" impulse into a desire for/consumption of "luxury" goods over any self- "awareness" that exists outside of this same economy. Ironically the mirror's reflective action, parallels the feedback loop of life in a capitalist economy.

The mirror image is also meant to be portal-like, speaking to the psychogeography of the city, in which one's environment is in a constant dramatic flux. Different worlds can be "randomly accessed" with a few footsteps or emergence from a subway tunnel. This portal today may be one-sided as well, as in surveillance or "security". These themes however, are touched on in other stages of the work, in which security mirrors are liberally employed as shifters of public space.

Is this "random access", anonymity, and compression of time and space, not so dissimilar to the structuring of our parallel "virtual world"? Is a strange loop being formed in the relation between the physical and cyber worlds, in which one must cancel the other out infinitely; or will the loop be a perpetuation of stasis, which prolongs the current economy and divisions of wealth? These questions are also tackled analogically in the remaining work from this series.

-Scott Kiernan, ZENITH FOUNDATION, 2009