9.2.2015 Interview // Jeremy Shaw: Manifest Destiny and the Slippage of Time | Berlin Art Link http://www.berlinartlink.com/2015/01/30/interviewjeremyshawmanifestdestinyandtheslippageoftime/ 1/5 (#) (http://www.berlinartlink.com) MAGAZINE » » (http://www.berlinartlink.com/magazine/) BERLIN RESOURCES » » (http://www.berlinartlink.com/resources/) ADVERTISE ON BAL (http://www.berlinartlink.com/about/onlineadvertisingsponsorships/) ABOUT » » (http://www.berlinartlink.com/about/) BAL PRODUCTIONS (http://www.berlinartlink.com/berlinartlinkproductions/) Interview // Jeremy Shaw: Manifest Destiny and the Slippage of Time Interview by Alison Hugill in Berlin; Friday, Jan. 30, 2015 Jeremy Shaw – ‘Marty Robbins Biggest Hits’ (2015), 10 billboards, El Paso, TX, A LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division) Exhibition; Image courtesy of the artist Canadian, Berlinbased artist Jeremy Shaw explores altered states in his considerable body of work, straddling the borders between neuroscience and what he refers to as ‘psychedelic kitsch.’ His studies of affect and the visual manifestations of emotional registers were exhibited recently at Johann König in Berlin, with his Hot 100s series, and he’s currently on the road displaying new work as part of the Manifest Destiny Billboard Project, appearing on billboard space across the US. Shaw spoke with us before embarking on his trip to Texas, where his chapter of the project takes place. Alison Hugill: As a Berlinbased artist, how did you get involved with the Manifest Destiny Billboard Project? Jeremy Shaw: It’s through an arts organization named LAND – Los Angeles Nomadic Division – which a friend of mine, Shamim Momin, started a few years ago. LAND is a roving public art platform doing all sorts of great things. I’ve known Shamim for years from New York where she was a curator at the Whitney and but we’d never actually worked together. When the plans for this project came up she knew I had done these poster campaigns in the past, so she invited me to be a part of it. There are ten artists involved: John Baldessari, Matthew Brannon, Eve Fowler, Zoe Crosher, etc., each with 10 billboards in a specific area along the I10 highway. It’s kind of like an evolving, Americawide outdoor group show. AH: The project has a clear political bent – the title offering a tongueincheek reference to North America’s colonial past and present. When coming up with your chapter of the project in El Paso, did you try to critically or ironically problematize the Wild West history? JS: I definitely had the idea of Manifest Destiny in mind going into my research, but it didn’t fully motivate the results of the finished work. I think as an overall entity, the project asserts the notion of Manifest Destiny on it’s own – moving from East to West with this coopting of corporate advertising space and so I didn’t feel like I necessarily needed to further illustrate that so much, although there are definite parallels to be made with the actual piece. I wanted to use the opportunity to adapt a strategy that I have used in the past numerous times, in which I find some event or film or moment from a city’s recent history and then resurrect the promotion of it by reprinting archival materials and postering the city, mixing them directly within the context of contemporary advertising but without any additional information or reference to the present day. So with Manifest Destiny, I transferred this poster strategy to a billboard platform. The main hurdle there was finding something within El Paso’s history – a city I had no prior connection to – that would work in this context. Jeremy Shaw – ‘Marty Robbins Biggest Hits’ (2015), 10 billboards, El Paso, TX, A LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division) Exhibition; Image courtesy of the artist Manifest Destiny can definitely be read into aspects of the piece though as the key motivation for the work comes from a song called ‘El Paso’ that was written by country star Marty Robbins. It’s a narrative tale of a man who falls in love with a woman and kills another suitor in jealous rage, only to be killed himself at the song’s conclusion. It’s a kind of romantic outlaw narrative tied to the notion of the Wild West. The song was written in 1959 and has been repeatedly reinserted into the pop cultural landscape which is a large part of my interest in it: this song that exists in the collective consciousness of the city and beyond and continues to resurface. Most recently it was used in the final episode of Breaking Bad in a scene where Walter White gets into his car, puts in a Marty Robbins “Biggest Hits” cassette and plays “El Paso” while driving to the show’s final scene in which he is killed. AH: So you don’t have an indexical reference to anything on the billboard – you are simply reproducing this iconic image of the past without any indication of the context? JS: It’s an attempt to incite a slippage in time within the viewer. It’s a kind of scifi gesture to come across something you’re aware of, or have a connection to, from the recent past that has represented itself without any contemporary reference, just simply exists again in front of you in the present day. I’ve done it multiple times, the first in 2009 in Vancouver when the Olympics were set to begin in 2010. Vancouver had had the World’s Expo in 1986, which was largely responsible for putting the city into the global consciousness. It was also rife with political problems, much like the coming Olympics were. So during this oneyear lead up to the Olympics I started repromoting the 1986 World Fair. At some points it seemed like there were more ads for Expo ’86 than for the Olympics themselves. It proved very confusing to the public and prompted a lot of online activity with people posting photos and forum threads trying to figure out what was going on. 11 people like this. Be the first of your friends. Like Share