Billboard Commission
We’ve been invited by Kingsgate Project Space to produce their latest 4:3 Billboard Commission, curated by Daniel Howard-Birt. Titled ‘Blood on their hands!’, the work takes the form of a large-format digital print, 4 x 3 metres in size, presented on the billboard outside Kingsgate Workshops in London from 20th July – 19th August 2017.
We were asked to provide a statement about the work —
BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS!
Everybody else is wrong. It’s an idea reinforced by our physical and virtual echo chambers every single day. In an ever-more connected world, our world-view grows increasingly isolated. Algorithms ensure we’re only ever confronted with views that support our own. The rest? Well that’s fake news and trolls.
We’re plummeting into the abyss, with no way to process the 24 hour news cycle of atrocities, bombs, murders, riots, disaster and destruction. So we look elsewhere for our monsters. And we find own particular demons, because it’s comforting to assume that each crime is committed by the devil we know. We see the world through a prism of our own assumptions.
So, who’s to blame? It’s the media. The Tories. Islamists. The old (or the young). Snowflake libtards. Republicans. Benefit scroungers. Gays. Blacks. The EU. Bankers. The Russians. Hipsters. Anarchists. Zionists. The metropolitan elite. Stupid northerners. Illegal immigrants. Islamic State. Corbynistas. Jews. Trump supporters. Soap dodgers. Globalisation. Google. Facebook. Liberals, moderates. Hate preachers. The New World Order. New Order? Who really cares? In our post-truth world of finger-pointing, whistle-blowing and virtue-signalling.
We want to decontextualise the accusation; to examine the role we play in creating insular neighbourhoods. We want to try and afford the scope for self-questioning. We’re all drawn to people and ideas that reinforce our own truths, but what better tool could there be for bursting out of the echo chamber than each other?
Iain Forsyth & Jane Pollard
London, 2017