Friday 10 June 2011

Bite 122: Mark Leckey - GreenScreenRefrigeratorAction, 2010

GreenScreenRefrigeratorAction, 2010, Samsung smart refrigerator, Samsung television, infinity green screen


An empty smart-fridge ready-made sits in the liminal space of an 'infinity' green-screen - used to superimpose the appliance into any given background. Nearby a screen plays a complex video of the object moving through space, showing its inner-workings and the sources of material that have brought it about. Throughout this collage (embedded above) the refrigerator speaks - as 'smart' ones do. But instead of detailing its gastronomical contents it speaks of its own processes, the chemicals living and reacting within its own shell. 

"My goal is to keep cold," it states, as if it were a person with a purpose and ambitions if its own. The artist himself, on a green stool with a green blanket draped over him, sits behind the large black object, completing the work. He speaks along with the appliance, becoming one with it, disappearing. "Becoming gas, becoming liquid, becoming vapour, becoming, becoming, becoming, becoming..."

The primordial, the Sun and the Moon, the past, the present, the future: all culminate in this futuristic object which sits in the kitchen, reliable and present - a member of the family.

"They ask and they answer. Above, below."


Currently on show at Serpentine Gallery, London, as part of Mark Leckey's exhibition See, We Assemble.