3min 40s sound recording (looped), two transducers and a raspberry pi, steel plasma cut circle and acrylic mirror
Music Credit: Birth of a Disco Dancer by Reload (1992)
Behind the looking glass...then rave is a video sound installation that considers rave culture as a political form of resistance against a continued system of enclosure. ... then rave reframes the representation of the British landscape as a green and pleasant space, blending together rave culture on Castlemorton Common with that of the Royal Military Artillery on the Woolwich Common, to consider how space is rendered unfree and for whom? In 1993 between 20,000 – 40,000 ravers occupied Castlemorton Common to participate in a free party that lasted for over a week. The negative press response to the rave led to the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 that would clamp down on illegal parties and extend trespassing laws against ravers, squatters, travellers and unauthorized campers. Gathering with music that included sounds ‘wholly or predominantly characterized by the emission of a succession of repetitive beats’ was made illegal. On Woolwich Common the Military and the King's Troop, Royal Horse Artillery charge across the common. The viewer is invited to press their ear to the metal to listen to the vibrations of the sounds. This kind of haptic encounter considers a different mode of sensing, one which incorporates a more embodied sense of experience that may offer up a new mode of thinking counter to a hierarchy of vision.
