What it is, is figuring out what it is

About

Space In Between is delighted to present What it is, is figuring out what it is, a project assembled around screenings of Ant Farm and T.R. Uthco’s The Eternal Frame (1975) alongside original contributions from 5 contemporary writers and artists. This exhibition and accompanying publication has been curated by Hannah Barton and brings together writings, performances, screenings and talks responding to the ideas contained within The Eternal Frame.

First screened in 1975, The Eternal Frame is a video piece documenting a re-enactment of the John F. Kennedy assassination in Dealey Plaza in a collaboration by two San Francisco-based radical architectural collectives: T.R. Uthco (Diane Andrews Hall, Doug Hall, Jody Procter) and Ant Farm (Chip Lord, Doug Michels, Curtis Schreier).

The work specifically deals with the role the media plays in the creation of (post) modern historical myths. By filming a re-enactment of the iconic Zapruder film – the extraordinary footage which captured the assassination of JFK on celluloid – The Eternal Frame not only confronts the processes which facilitate the embedding of memory and perceptions via framed histories, but speaks of the changing ways in which such events are recorded, disseminated and dissected. Resultantly, the piece polyphonically functions as a historic document in its own right. Conceived in response to changing communicative practices brought about by emergent arrays of then novel-technologies, as well as the consequent crystalisation of the relationship between iconography and essential power, the efficacy of Ant Farm and T.R. Uthco’s production has only been amplified over time. 40 years after The Eternal Frame’s first screening, the social and cultural implications of the splintering of narrative, set in motion with the crack of that fatal bullet in Dealey Plaza, November 22, 1963, are still being negotiated today.

What it is, is figuring out what it is takes this video work as a starting point, with 5 invited artists and writers producing responses to themes, tropes or points of concern gleaned from their viewings of The Eternal Frame. These returns will be brought together in a publication, which will be launched at the preview, with a series of accompanying events taking place over the coming weeks. Artists included are David Raymond Conroy, Emily LaBarge, Jessie McLaughlin, Sarah Bayliss and Tim Steer.

The Preview will include a performance and the launch of the publication. Further screening and events schedule will be confirmed.