ELLEN RINGSTAD

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Site-specific, performative installation. VHS-tapes, wooden frame in span between two walls, scissors. 

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“The battle for the mind (...) will be fought in the video arena, the Videodrome. The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye,” as Brian O'Blivion foretold (Videodrome, Cronenberg 1983). The battle of the home video formats themselves turned out a bloody one, leaving many a casualty in the fields of green, even the victor destined for dethronement, shamefully banished to the darker corners of thrift stores and ultimately the relative obscurity of the garbage heap, sacrificed on the altar of common good, paving way for younger, more adept feats of engineering. In this day and age, none but the artist is likely to find any value whatsoever in these never-rotting intestines of the dead king's remains, ad infinitum. Ad Reinhardt – painter of black! – found the use of shiny blacks in art objectionable, but that was way back then, and now is in the now and now we are in the know. Your very own deck for home divination? Never been easier, as Charlie Brooker pointed out: Turn off your Liquid Crystal Display, that portable entertainment system, your LapBook Ho, ultra slim eye phone (careful where you drop that thing, could leave you out of luck for seven years), and – ALAKAZAM! –gazing into the abyss of the Black Mirror (Channel 4, 2011), YOU will see potential pasts, the ghost of christmas future, such a magical being you are. Whatcha spywith yo mind's eye?

- Exhibition text by Rasmus Hungnes, 2013.