'Original / Recordings', 2009 - 2010
Two compact discs set mounted on mirror plexi-glass.
5 3/4 X 11 Inches
Limited edition of 200
$30.-
50 unmounted CD sets are included in LMAKprojects' 5 year anniversary portfolio
“Original / Recordings” is a sound work, presented on two compact discs, that appropriates another sound work by Liam Gillick, titled “An Idea Just Out of Reach: Original Recordings” (2009). Gillick’s original compact disc contains speeches given in Berlin on the occasion of his selection to represent Germany in the 2009 Venice Biennale; he explains to an audience what his work consists of, and gives anecdotal stories about his life and work.
Graydon performs a simple operation on these original recordings: in the work’s first CD, all of Gillick’s language is left intact except that all nouns have been removed and replaced by silence. The words of all definite objects and proper names appear on the second CD, with passages of silence punctuating the spoken list of things, movements and people. If the two CD’s were played together in synch, Gillick’s original speech would be woven back together again, made whole. Listening to either on their own, what is left is a trace that is in
The work is concerned with sound’s dual existence as object (a physical disc, a recording) and as discourse (a window onto the speeches’ subjects), a duality engaged by Gillick’s own work. The focus is on the voice, that most particular of sounds which itself constantly oscillates between describing the world and constructing the identity of the speaker.
The graphic design of “Original / Recordings” mimics that of the original release, but captures it in an incomplete stage of migration from one object to two. As the design appears to slide off the surface of the first CD and onto the face of the second, it reveals the mirror surface of the bare compact disc. This peek behind the object to the mirror behind references two of the key discussions in Gillick’s speeches. The first is about what he calls an artist’s “second mirror phase” of development as they build their artistic identity. The second is a story about how Gillick came to be an artist himself: When he was six years old, his family went to an exhibition of Robert Morris’ Mirror Cubes, and while his parents scoffed that “anyone could do that,” that was precisely what the young Gillick loved about it.
Artist Statement:
My experience of Liam Gillick’s work has always felt a bit like listening to disc 1 of “Original / Recordings”: you think you know just what he’s talking about, it flows. But in retrospect it is impossible to grasp, it recedes into nothing, like a phantom topography. And then reading about Gillick has always felt like listening to disc 2, nothing but a laundry list of push-button topics and au currant names, devoid of an animating spirit, and very specifically without the flow. An alternate titling of my work might be: disc 1: “The Smoke,” disc 2: “The Mirrors.”
