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Press Release - 8th December 2011 |
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Although seldom published, lists are a major part of Duggan’s practice. In his latest work, Black and Red Screensaver Piece, he has created a downloadable screensaver that lists items thought to be useful during a disaster or event in which food becomes scarce and law and order are severely compromised. The piece is partly inspired by Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, in which a father and son wander among wasteland America under persecution of extreme hunger and widespread cannibalism. With a keen interest in end-of-the-world scenarios such as those depicted in The Road, as well as Dawn of the Dead style Zombie outbreaks, Duggan has spent time researching survival websites, where self-proclaimed ‘Preppers’ write lists of items and stock needed to survive certain events or incidents. He has observed that the lists are practical to a degree, but eventually become benign products of fantasy. It is in this sense that he sees the act of prepping as a lonely hobby. Black and Red Screensaver Piece attempts to distribute a list Duggan has written himself. The items listed would help someone become a mobile and nomadic scavenger, rather than help someone live in a self-sustained bubble. It is thus a list to remember, rather than one to plan with. By using a screensaver, reading the list in its entirety is made a tedious task; it is a list which Duggan hopes people will return to now and again, probably when they are not expecting to. This method of delivery encourages the items to be remembered in an incomplete way. A type of remembering which Duggan likens to much of the information we receive via our computers in that it is incomplete, sporadic and foundationless. |
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Black and Red Screensaver Piece is on display at The Monks Gallery in Lincoln from 9th - 31st of December 2011. |