THE CANINE AGENDA 

THE CANINE AGENDA

THE CANINE AGENDA
by Dr. Bill Aitchison

7:30 pm, 16 October, 2008
Corner of Vyner Street / Mowlem Street, London


The Lorem Ipsum Gallery is pleased to present The Canine Agenda - a street performance by Dr. Bill Aitchison. The Canine Agenda is the first in a series of off site events by the Lorem Ipsum Gallery.

The Canine Agenda is a performance that presents and represent ‘false causalities’; errors in logic that are prevalent in attempts to explain global events (“The soldiers are in Iraq because there are Terrorists there”), not to say micro human affairs. Canine Agenda’s principal frame of reference is conspiracy theories. The intention is not to simply criticise false causalities, for they are inevitable, but rather to use them within the frame of conspiracy theories, to give shape to the experience of unknowing, to the sense that much of what we believe may be false.

The Canine Agenda traces a way around conspiracy theories so that they become apparent as a language and paranoid system of logic in their own right. By identifying their perimeter The Canine Agenda simultaneously uses the language of conspiracies and takes distance from it; a challenge as conspiracy theories tend to be hermetic, stemming from the desire for clear causality where none exists. Contradictory conspiracy theories are put alongside other frames of reference such as physical and theatrical approaches to showing causality creating instability and conflict within the performance.

The Canine Agenda presents sequences of events and ideas in such a way as to fracture narrative through continual interruption, associative leaps and diversions, changing the character and meaning of events with repetition and reversal. Guiding this formalistic approach to composition is the collage. Using familiar images and themes from conspiracy theories such as 9/11 and Nostradamus, and from popular esoteric theories such as psychic experiments and The Pyramids. These are connected in The Canine Agenda by literally travelling across the collage from side to side, that is to say, from idea to idea, creating untypical connections such as following a conspiracy that links Saddam Hussein’s novels to The Tower of Babel, and Pavlov’s dogs to Stone Circles.

Bill Aitchison is a performance artist based in London whose work spans live events, audio art and writing. His work has been seen widely across London at such spaces as the ICA, BAC, Whitechapel Gallery, CPT, South London Gallery, Lorem Ipsum Gallery and Chelsea Theatre, in site-specific exhibitions, on the streets and buses, and at artist-curated clubs such as OMSK, The Klinker and Plunge. He has shown his performances in New York (Int. Fringe & independently), and at Plateaux (Frankfurt) ZAZ (Tel Aviv/Jerusalem), Wunder der Praire (Mannheim) Playground (Leuven), MAP (Dubrovnik), and at the British Council Showcase in Edinburgh. Bill had had several soundworks broadcast on Resonance FM, London’s artist-run radio station. He has a practice-based PhD (Goldsmith College, Uni. of London) on Performance Art and Performer Discipline and completed a BA in Fine Art/Theatre Studies at Wolverhampton University. Collaboratively, he has created and presented performances and installations with American writer and experimental theatre director Julia Lee Barclay/Apocryphal Theatre and he works regularly with Croatian performance artist and choreographer Ivana Müller, co-writing and performing award winning works that have played extensively in theatres, festivals and galleries in Europe and the US.


http://www.loremipsumgallery.com