This record brings together the three components from a major body of work by Ruth Buchanan. Here, the forms of performance, exhibition and film are compressed through and into audio; the record becoming both the documentation of the work at the same time as proposing a script for future versions. Buchanan’s texts and graphics are rendered into paired back dense sound pieces where the capacity of language as a system that is both employed by and defines the subject is emphasized. Buchanan explores the examination of subject and system by language, where language itself constitutes a contested field of interaction between the two.

Or, a building was recorded in part at the Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe. Or, a screen was recorded in part at the Deutsche Kinemathek – Museum für Film und Fernsehen, Berlin.

This record is released on the occasion of the exhibition Or, a camera Or, a building Or, a screen by Ruth Buchanan at the Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof, Hamburg, September 19 – December 13, 2015 curated by Anna Sabrina Schmid.

The exhibition and the record act as the epilogue to the body of work commissioned by the Badischer Kunstverein, Karslruhe and the Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane.

You can here an audio sample here.