The works in the exhibition Press Record comment through a sonic filter on micro-gestures and furtive strategies, plastic waste and manufacturing processes, sited scatterings and dispersal systems. Here, sound is present as both potential and material, reference and inference. The exhibition features three distinct bodies of work: Micro (2014), 4 feet and 33 inches (2014-2017), and Record Release (2012-2020). The latter will occupy the entirety of the main space and takes as its starting point the basic physical unit to make vinyl records: lentil-sized PVC (polyvinyl chloride) pellets. These minuscule bits of potential sound appear in various works that track the process of releasing in various obsessional ways. A record release, like a book launch, usually marks a project’s culmination; this reverses the process, the release is the project. This reversal enables the project to, hopefully, transcend jejune vinyl fetishism in favour of a more expanded, exploratory commentary on commodities. As the artist, musician and critic Seth Kim-Cohen put it, in discussing Record Release in his book Against Ambience (Bloomsbury 2016), "this 'record' is a record of social exchange, of site, of time, and of the exploded, diagrammatic construct of its potential for signification." For the artist, the 'record' is also a monument to the tiny and barely perceptible; a study in slow and inefficient action; a merging of depletion with completion.
The artist would like to thank : Avatar, Rob Cruickshank, Lauren Cullen, Christopher Dela Cruz, Wyn Geleynse, Marla Hlady, Renée Lear, Ryan Legassicke, Dimitri Levanoff, Chloe Lum, Jennifer Martin, McWood Studios, Precision Record Pressing, Lorena Salome, Orest Tataryn, Sam Wagter, Christopher Willes, Jade Williamson, Zalucky Contemporary, and the OBORO team.
Christof Migone - Press Record from OBORO on Vimeo.