allsopp&weir are Paul Allsopp and Andy Weir, who have been working together since 2003. They completed an MA in Contemporary Art Theory (2003) and an MFA in Fine Art (2007) at Goldsmiths College, London. Their work, in film and video, investigates rituals of possession or invocation; rhythm, perception and the sound/image relation; effects of exhaustion; and affects of the voice and language.
For ‘An Approximate Call’ Permanent Gallery presents two new allsopp&weir works. ‘Amplification Device’ (2007) shows a man at an airport runway at the edge of the city. He builds an impromptu machine from surrounding debris – pieces of pipe, tape, an old watering can – and uses it to shout through every time a plane passes overhead. Gradually the strict compositional structure shifts to an improvised rhythm as, tired, he turns away from the planes, abandons attempts at communication, and starts to make his own sounds. The film, produced through the re-photographing and re-animation of 12,000 still frames, exists in an uncertain relation to the events it depicts. This will be projected in the main gallery space alongside a new work, currently in production, developing the use of language machines in circuits of suffocation.
The exhibition will include a semi-dubbed interview with the artists and independent curator Lucia Farinati (Saturday 1 December), a publication including texts by curators Francesco Pedraglio (FormContent) and Ellen Mara de Wachter (Barbican), and a screening of films selected by allsopp&weir in collaboration with Cinematheque, Brighton.
