Participating Artists
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Twentyfivefold Manifestation, 2008 (video still), video, 20:00 minutes, sound, courtesy of the Artist and On Stellar Rays Gallery, New York
Brody Condon
This work documents a performance enacted by multiple participants, which unfolded over the course of several days as part of the Sonsbeek International Sculpture Exhibition in Holland. The participants in this work all belong, in one way or another, to a subculture whose members come together to play fantasy games. For this game, Condon invented a system of social and behavioral codes, as well as a language and a history. The players built on this basis, inventing new rituals and creating various forms of social organization within this system. Among other things, they engaged in ritual activities related to the sculptures exhibited in the park, and communicated with the exhibition's visitors. In this work, they appear as members of a community that cannot be identified with any specific time or place; their rituals call to mind ancient tribal ceremonies, while their costumes and accessories seem to belong to a fictional, futuristic scenario. As one comes to understand the context in which these figures play and act, one realizes that the artist is raising a series of questions concerning the formation of communities, their ceremonies and ritual, as well as individual identity and its transformation in relation to a collective narrative.
Born in Mexico, 1974; lives and works in New York
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