Corin Sworn is interested in the means by which artifacts are borrowed, adapted and reconfigured to tell various stories. Her work often explores the alternate narratives that cultural products might develop through use. Sworn is interested in hierarchies of attention, the systems that order these and how the erratic nature of subjective perception might undermine them.
FOR ‘TOMORROW NEVER KNOWS’
“It is possible to see one crucial aspect of modernity as an ongoing crisis of attentiveness, in which changing configurations of capitalism continually push attention and distraction to new limits and thresholds, with an endless sequence of new products, sources of stimulation and streams of information and then respond with new methods of managing and regulating perception.” - Jonathan Crary
How do we manage our passage through the ever stronger gales of images and information that buffets us? Information is not inherently meaningful, it needs to be contextualised and processed to have any sense and perhaps the means by which we process information are somewhat open. Are there processes of resistance – means by which we can delay understanding, deny our attention or misinterpret the signs around us for our own purpose? Or are we ourselves just more units within the constant circulation of matter and ideas that shift and course across the globe?
Using the power dynamics of the screen test Sworn is working on a video that explores how we interpret or resist information and the roles it might ascribe to us. Furthermore since poetry is said to resist, delay, redefine and call attention to the construction of meaning. Sworn has been attempting to borrow from it in producing a script. She hopes to make a video that examines the movement, exchange and availability of images, matter and meaning around us and how we might attend, access, or resist these as we are swept up in their tow.
Solo exhibitions include: Art Now at Tate Britain (2011), Tramway (2010) and Washington Garcia for Glasgow International (2010). Group exhibitions include: Hors Pistes, Centre Pompidou, (2011) Morality, Witte de With (2010) EAST International (2009), Kunsthalle Basel (2009), Participant Inc. New York (2008). Sworn is based in Glasgow and represented by Blanket Contemporary Inc, Vancouver and Kendall Koppe Gallery, Glasgow.
Still from As the Mark Strays , video, mixed media, 2012
As the Mark Strays production still, 2012
As the Mark Strays production still, 2012
As the Mark Strays production still, 2012
As the Mark Strays production still, 2012
As the Mark Strays production still, 2012
As the Mark Strays production still, 2012
Lens Prism, 2010. Extract.
Lens Prism, 2010. Production still by Kendall Koppe.
Lens Prism was commissioned by Berwick Upon Tweed Film and Media Festival; Creative Producer: Tramway.
Courtesy the artist, Kendall Koppe Gallery and Blanket Contemporary Inc.