RMIT University Library - Learning Lab

Artist Statement – learning activity - structure

This text has been divided into parts that show the structure of the text and the specific areas covered. The square brackets indicate the parts and the legend at the bottom of the page defines what those parts are.

Keith W Clancy  - artist statement – performance (131 words)
Melbourne, Australia  
RMIT alumnus 
(RMIT University Gallery)
Courtesy of the artist 

BLACK WHOLE (RMX), 2019 
single-channel 4K video loop, stereo sound 
Duration: 45 minutes 
 
[Content]BLACK WHOLE (RMX) restages an imaginary cabaret performed by an unidentified Officer: he is at once a ghost, a dream and a traumatic symptom.  [end Content]
 
[Format] Richard Strauss’s opera Ariadne auf Naxos (1916) acts as a self-nesting framework for this meta-fictional allegory about art, sex, death and childhood. Against the silent commentary of old master paintings, arias by Handel and Vivaldi are ‘mistranslated’ by texts adapted from Octave Mirbeau’s  ‘The Torture Garden’ (1899).  [end Format]
 
[Rationale] No relations in the work are straightforward: here there is in fact no immediate relation at all between sound and vision. The artist finds pleasure in the way all these elements ‘rub up’ against one another. Everything that might normally be synchronised is displaced or distorted. Perversion is the law, and pleasure executes the sentence: sumptuous surfaces delight in the shattering of the self. [end Rationale]

©Copyright Keith W Clancy
RMIT Alumnus
 
Parts of the statement
Content - what is the work about?
Context - what elements are remixed to form the work?
Rationale and artist intent