ARCHIE BROOKS

For the second offering of the exhibition, Archie would like to share selected works from his portfolio of video art. You can see his pieces here, on our Youtube channel, and read below for some interesting insights and thoughts from the artist and curator.
About Archie:
Archie Brooks’ practice explores human ontology and perceptions of our reality through the prism of digital media. His work draws from ideas around the subjectiveness of time, observation and the fundamentals of video. Within these works he uses space to create intimate experiences between spectator and artwork, creating new intimate spaces for them to explore. He attempts to interfere with the viewers’ estimated field of perception, creating an imbalance between real space and the space of the video.
From the artist:
Our experience of time can be said to be subjective. Our perception of time as a linear structure is a mental construct and therefore individuals’ perceptions differ. This psychological ‘time’ creates separate temporal contexts by which duration is judged in a relative manner. Since human beings are bound by time, using time based mediums is befitting to explore these ideas because of its specific temporality. I explore the perception of time in many aspects of my work, each piece of work needs to be spent time with in order to be activated, each piece takes into account the spacetime that the observer inhabits and manipulates it.
Using live footage to interfere with viewers’ estimated field of perception, my artwork creates imbalance between real space and the space of the video, both of which belong to the same time frame, which in turn manipulates the movement and experience of the viewer. This coincides with artworks where I have produced live feeds within rooms that are delayed, allowing people to view a past version of the space they are present in, as well as temporal past versions of themselves and others in the digital realm. I want viewers to engage beyond the habitual way we interact with video. By allowing viewers to explore the object it becomes less ephemeral and more material. The meaning of the videos is multiple and polymorphous and any instance of interpretation largely depends on who is looking; the person engaged in active transaction with the work also brings their individual life history.
Claire Bishop emphasises the importance of the audience in the development of art, she says, installation art “desire(s) to heighten viewer’s awareness of how objects are positioned
(installed) in a space, and of our bodily response to this … installation art creates a situation
in which the viewer physically enters, and insists that you regard this in singular totality”
- Archie Brooks