ICA

Anna Barham

27 Jul - 02 Aug 2015

Anna Barham, installation at fig-2
Photography by © Benjamin Cosmo Westoby
ANNA BARHAM
fig-2 30/50
27 July–2 August 2015

Concentrating on text as the main material of her production, Anna Barham furthers her ongoing investigation into the dichotomy of meaning and its translation as various codes – alphabet, sound, and image. Barham’s project for fig-2 bases its structure on her previous live production reading groups in which malleable interpretations of a selected text are created and activated by the participants’ voices and speech to text software. For fig-2 the process is stretched across the duration of a week where the group exists as a series of encounters rather than a simultaneous presence: every day different interpretations generated the previous day will be provided to each visitor to choose from and to add a new translation of the text by voicing their selected piece. Barham addresses the unruly potential of meaning and the active role of the viewer / reader by setting up complex feedback loops between human and computer processes. Evoking century-old tendencies towards stepping out of meaning production in a language, her work embodies the intentions of Dadaists, and finds a paradoxical freedom in Wittgenstein’s demarcation of human thought within language.

Anna Barham (b. 1974, UK) lives and works in London. Recent solo projects include: Galerie Nordenhake, Stockholm (2015) Composite, Brussels (2015); Rotterdam Film Festival (2015); Hayward Gallery Project Space, London (2014); Arcade, London (2013); Site Gallery, Sheffield (2013) MK Gallery, Milton Keynes (2013); Art on the Underground, London (2012). Recent group exhibitions and screenings include Centre Pompidou, Paris (2015); Künstlerhaus KM–, Graz, Austria (2015); STUK, Leuven (2014); South London Gallery, London (2013); Turner Contemporary, Margate (2013). In September she will have a solo exhibition at Arcade, London.
 

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