Fugue States @ CCA

Texts are included in this work via dialogues and subtitles that are dense but richly economical. Questions are asked of certain groups in this debate: for instance, do fortune tellers materially influence those to whom they tell their fortune? It doesn’t take long to recognise the hammy acting of workshop scripts on the topic of ESP, making more obvious the inference of the actor as the medium. It’s a nice framing of the different voices that feature throughout the video, including the participants of the workshops and transcriptions of American medium Jane Roberts. As an interesting further complication, there are shots of sun-dried and dusty Marseillaise landscapes with bold and unearthly bright architecture.

Into the next room, it’s the work of Lauren Gault. There’s an expressed interest in changing states, with a scattering of half-formed cast sculptures and unrelated objects that are admittedly curious. Gault’s not giving much away, and there’s too much of a reliance on the 'resonant quality of objects.' It’s too vague a demand to commune somehow with the objects, and swings far past a critical attitude towards the 'metaphysical and unverifiable', and into an undefined spiritualism.

Throughout the works is a genuine engagement with the different kinds of extra-sensory perception. This subject matter brings the twin dangers of insensitive dismissal and equally unenlightening rehashing. Though Gault’s work circles the latter, there are nevertheless less obvious moments of nuance in Gibbs’ work. Specifically, the last room includes Gibbs’ video work. Transferred from film to HD, the same film that was exposed to moonlight is encased in clay and displayed as discrete sculptures, setting up an odd relationship with video as object, reproduction and a dissolving of the medium as separate from what is mediated.