information
jennacollinspa@gmail.com
JENNA COLLINS
Video 7: 48
English
Colour with sound
‘The King of the Stool Pigeons' invites viewers to comment on the building of an absurd monument to scientific and technological progress. Built from short clips produced by institutions, organisations, and companies in the latter half of the 20th century, the construction is narrated by an unidentified expert and loosely based on the text accompanying Albrecht Dürer’s controversial 1525 design for a ‘Monument to the Vanquished Peasants.’ References from science and engineering are conflated with those from the arts in a hyperactive, fictional reformulation that assembles a confident yet ridiculous stack of figures, objects, and scenarios. ‘The King of the Stool Pigeons’ draws out the human impulses behind progress presented as fact, seeks out the affective precedents of developments such as A.I., and questions the hierarchies of power and influence that shape where we go next.
ARTIST:
Jenna Collins (b. London, UK) makes video, sound, and text-based works that explore personal, poetic, philosophical, and political expressions in archival materials documenting technological development. Adopting and expanding forms drawn from artistic, literary, industrial, and commercial sources, her absurd fictions subvert the apparent inevitability of progress along any given path.
Her recent solo and collaborative projects have been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including the London Film Festival, BBC Radio 3, Camden Art Centre, and the Stanley Picker Gallery (UK); Gotland Art Museum (Sweden); Casa Victor Hugo (Cuba); Pratt Institute (USA); OOO (Finland); and On Air – On Site (Netherlands). Her book One, 2, 3 was published by Joan Publishing, London, in 2021.