From the pandemic, into the space!

My name is Edy Fung, an artist based in Derry since 5 years ago. I have just moved into the space of St Augustine’s Schoolhouse this week, in the midst of the pandemic and the second lockdown, which is fine! The pandemic forms the situated context for this residency. It drives the idea for a 14 consecutive daily posts on instagram, a known duration for self-isolation in 2020. 

These digital posts will be part of my new solo work, “Diaries. Monuments. Memory. Documentation. Event. Pandemic. Archive. Digital identity. Encoding. Decoding. Commemoration. Deja-vu. Always-already. Burying shame. Treehole. Winter counts.”.

The text content will manifest as a sonic element in the exhibition space in St Augustine’s.

 

Since earlier this year I have been drawn to the idea of metatext and intertext, as a method to challenge the immediacy imposed by social media platforms. If I am to post something on instagram, as an artist, how do I differentiate that to other instantaneously consumed content and advertisement in the same sea of overloaded pixels? How do I achieve a meaningful engagement with the audience, like the way a gallery display would, without flattening my art to the same plane as a low res memetic moving image of a dog wagging its tail? 

It’s like the way you tell a musician about their album, that it sounds good, it’s easy-listening. If the musician asks ‘is it immediate?’ and you replied, ‘Yes, it is!’, they won’t be very happy about it. 

 

Thanks to this space provided by Art Arcadia and Liverpool Irish Festival, and previously GoldenThread Gallery and CCA Derry~Londonderry, so that I have the opportunity to test ideas out a bit on instagrams.