NEWS / REEL

NEWS (2005) and REEL (2005) are standalone and related works developed during a residency at the Media Archive of Central England (MACE). The residency was one of three undertaken as part of the Arts Council England Necessary Journeys programme, the other artists being Keith Piper and Jackie Kay. Necessary Journeys took its cue from the BFI’s Black World initiative, and culminated with a conference at Tate Modern and an eponymous publication (November 2005).

NEWS takes the form of a postcard book, an idiosyncratic and selective 'A to Z' that reproduces the rhetoric of the archive-as-index, highlighting both explicit and oblique preoccupations with the 'foreign' and 'strange'. The perforated edges encourage the deconstruction and re-circulation of ‘old news’ as ‘new news’, unsettling their historicity, as missives form the archive. REEL re-edits archival footage to explore forms of cultural display and consumption, and the gaze of / from / into the archive.

NEWS / REEL is discussed in ‘susan pui san lok: Journeys, Documenting, Indexing, Archives, and Practice-led Research, a conversation with Marquard Smith’ in Art Journal (Winter issue, vol.65, no.4, 2006). A selection of images from NEWS were published in Paperweight: A Newspaper of Visual and Material Culture (London: Polygraphia, 2011, n.2).

NEWS / REEL has been presented at a number of conferences including ‘Location: the Museum, the Academy, and the Studio’, the 34th AAH Annual Conference, in the session, ‘Archival Impulse: Location and No-Place’, Tate Britain (2008); and Matters of Perception: Articulating Hybridity, the Inaugural Gertz Distinguished Teaching Series, Alfred University, New York (2008).

NEWS was shown in the group exhibition, 'Tables of Thought' (2010, Finnish Academy of Fine Arts). NEWS / REEL featured in 'How We Became Metadata' (2010, University of Westminster Gallery). REEL has also screened at 'Collective Rhythm', Cornerhouse and BBC Big Screen, Manchester (July 2006, Bigger Picture Big Dance programme) 'Arcade', Westbourne Studios, London (September 2006); and 'Artists in the Archive' at Cornerhouse and BBC Big Screen, Manchester (2008). (Bigger Picture programme).

• https://spsl-projects.net/news-reel/
• https://www.e-flux.com/announcements/417...