About
Ben Cain will develop a work which involves the space of a book, or a glossary, an A-Z, being expanded into a 3D environment in which pages become walls or doors, and printed images become video projection. The work will, in part, be formed though a series of workshops during which those taking part attempt to outline the past, present, and future faces of an area, or areas of Sheffield. Using Sheffield as a starting point, outlines of a new semi-fictional place will begin to emerge. The collectively developed âimage-space' will gradually evolve into an installation involving temporary walls, digital prints and video/slide projection. The resulting construction will combine the theatre stage, museum, and domestic inhabitable space, infused with some un-placeable ideology, a vernacular style connected to who knows where or when.
Whilst employing codes and symbols which recall certain types of elementary education (where a triangle recalls a hill, and a circle recalls the moon or the sun), and the idea of teaching a world-view, the work at the same time rejects the idea of definitive descriptions or representations of places/times/people.
Participants and other viewers can roam the spaces, images and texts, literally finding themselves in front of the work, in the middle of it, and behind it; as audience, subjects and producers, they merge and confuse the roles of insider and outsider, inhabitants and visitors.
