The makers of compilation tapes, unsequentially edited, recall anecdotes, attempting to explain the significance of the particular chosen songs. At times this evolves tangentially into eulogising about the band or the partner for whom the tape was made, though often precise moments; concerts, bedrooms, dance floors are recalled and described
Exhibition Guide, Dan Howard-Birt
For Fucked up lover, Forsyth & Pollard invited 12 friends to compile an audio mixtape for their lovers. Each participant was then filmed discussing their tape, the music selected and the person it was made for. The resulting ten hours of footage was then edited into an intimate, confessional and entertaining single narrative. Forsyth & Pollard cut quickly between participants, collaging stories, associations, statements, memories and truth.
The work became the first in an ongoing series, which has charted over different times and cities the play of youth’s universal understanding of the ability of music, within the context of memory and romance, to transcend cliché and to act as an extra-linguistic communicative bond.
The work was commissioned for the exhibition Modern Love at Hobbypop Museum in Dusseldorf and Union Gallery in London, curated by Dan Howard-Birt. The exhibition also included Maria Chen, Sophie Brown, Paul Housley, Alex Morrison, Chris Owen, Matthew Sawyer, Saron Hughes, Luke Gottelier, Matt Calderwood, Leigh Curtis, Emily-Jo Sargent, Max Hymes, Giles Round, Roger Hiorns, Catharina Barich, Peter Harris and Daniel Howard-Birt.
This work embodies an understanding of music’s ability, within the context of romance, to transcend cliché and begin to act as an extra-linguistic (in spite of its lyrics) communicative bond. A force that can be taken up by any number of actual, platonic or imaginary relationships and carry for each one a different meaning.
Exhibition Guide, Dan Howard-Birt
