*The Show & the Show*

Web Resident 2016

The Show & The Show is a stage loosely inspired by China Mieville’s The City & the
City, which describes »two cities that occupy much of the same geographical space but via the volition of their citizens are perceived as two different cities«. A citizen of one city must unsee (i.e., consciously erase from their mind or fade into the background) the people, buildings, & events taking place in the other city – even if they are an inch away. This separation is emphasised by the style of clothing, architecture, gait, & the way denizens of each city generally carry themselves.

The Show & the Show transfers this idea to the domain of art by staging two shows that are simultaneously conterminous & contemporaneous; i.e., two shows taking place in the same space at the same time. The unseeing is contingent upon the viewer, & manifests as the act of blinking. The separation of the two shows is emphasised by the genre, technique, & chronology of the artworks. A common spacetime permeates.

The first photograph was the blink. This interruption of sight, of perspectival and
binocular vision, also created the afterimage. The Show & the Show posits the blink as the birth of montage.

Featuring writings & artwork by Brud, Aga Szwengier, Claude Heiland-Allen, Ewa Polska, Howard Rheingold, Inspector General Indigenous Genitalman, Joanna Rajkowska, Juan-Pablo Villegas Delgado, Kamil Julian, Oddity Medium, Oscar Pabon Abraham Morales, Proceedings of the Ciscaucasus Xabarnama, Richard Barbrook & Andy Cameron, Robert Kusmirowski, Valentino Braitenberg, Vilem Flusser, & Walter Scott, et al.