‘In the Mouth of the Wolf’

Clodagh Emoe, Anahita Razmi, School of Missing Studies, Subject to Authority Reading group, COLLECTED

 Thur 18th Aug 6 – 9pm / Event Thur 1st Sept 6-7pm / Closing Event Sat 10th Sept

‘I could be dead. He slit my tongue into ribbons. My head is hanging off the table, blood falling on the floor. I could be dead because I feel nothing but this happened before. Minutes without pain until it surged back through me like a river. Eyes full of water. A blurred insect slips out from behind a table leg and begins to feed on the pooling blood. Concentrate.’ -Francis McKee ‘What in the world can I do’

This project is driven by the act of witness and the encounter in contested spaces whether municipal or ideological. It looks at how artists approach research and the dissemination of thought and how the knowledge structures they access, personally, politically and philosophically are forming a channel for public practice. A series of multi-format texts form the basis of this project, examining the instrumentalisation of modes of broadcast and publishing, how narratives are constructed within contemporary communication and education systems and how these narratives may be authored by artists.

The ongoing destabilisation of institutional power structures globally has given rise to a more acute attempt to enforce social hierarchy and meritocracy socially, politically and economically. Yet traditional methods of exerting social dominance have become ineffective at maintaining stability in the current age of personal broadcast and visual agency. Increasingly, previously under-represented groups are affecting these narratives and gaining agency on their own representation in media through the proliferation of digital, visual footage, frequently charged with a dominant narrative of personal perception rather than that of an objective document of observation.

‘In the mouth of the wolf’ proposes a slight, altered reality where journalism and reporting is a defunct and unoccupied field. Artists have been drawn into the vacuum by gravitational force and are controlling the distribution of capabilities and the exercise of influence disseminating thought and action through new channels as the voice of authority. The gallery becomes a public square where thinking may be felt, a station for subjectivity, disembodied voices and notions of the unseen, a platform for hidden acts to be received by a new audience and a space for thought.