IAN WOOLDRIDGE 2022 1
Four Perspectives for the Blue Whale. 03.05.19 Istituto Svizzero, Rome IT. In 2019, at Istituto Svizzero Rome, I was invited to create an event, carte blanch. I had recently come across the Blue Whale Challenge - a 50-step suicide challenge that created a media sensation (tabloid hysteria). It was the cliche narrative of an older generation panicking over a younger generation, worrying for the lost youth. The same narrative of the “summer of love” when kids across America ran away to The Haight & Ashbury in San Francisco in 1967, dropping out. The same narrative of “satanic panic” in the 1980s USA, that spread globally by the ’90s. The same narrative of computer games coursing gun crime. A narrative that is somewhat baseless but notably fetishizes adolescents. Suicide rates did NOT increase with the blue whale challenge, yet there was an international outcry, and schools across the globe created a pink whale challenge to counteract the blue whale challenge. I invited 3 artists/writers to read a text about adolescence. Mohamed Almusibli, Marlie Mul & Harry Burke. A lyric response and human response to position sincerity on the subject of adolescence. It ended with my performance It’s A Funny Game (2019) After the event, I began collecting and analysing whale iconography and the slogans /texts used for infographics. Graphics by Green Peace were repurposed for the blue whale challenge and repurposed again for the pink whale challenge.
Four Perspectives for the Blue Whale.
It’s A Funny Game (2019) https://vimeo.com/363006495/6627a56e51
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The Blue Whale: Cycles of Time (2022) HelmHaus, Zurich, CH. Blue whales are the largest animals ever known to have lived on Earth and as such the blue whale has been viewed as both a symbol of life and extinction. In the late 1970s Greenpeace began an ongoing campaign to end commercial whaling. They used cute illustrations of Blue Whales in their infographics to emote sympathetic reactions to their cause. In 2016 The Blue Whale Game first came to public attention. The game, considered by many to be a hoax, is a suicide challenge conducted over social media platforms. The installation for the Helmhaus recomposes Blue Whale iconography forming a poetic of objects and images around the classic repeated narrative of lost youth, gameplay, life and survival.
Green Peace Posters
Blue Whale Challenge.
Pink Whale Challenge
Jonah and the Whale. 3
Early digital sketch
Seggs & Unalive. 10.03.22 Poesie bei Nacht. BACKROOMS. Kunsthalle Zürich. CH
* Salon style reading of original video scripts from the past 4 years. * This new series Poesie bei Nacht. BACKROOMS at Kunsthalle Zürich is curated by Otto Bonnen who invited the artists to contribute a physical work to stay in the space and the works acculmilated during the series. * I created the soft sculpture Karate flower of a figure karate kicking a flower, made of white denim. The piece is a direct ode to poet Bruce Boone and his poem Karate Flower (1973) which is about a queer manered expression of strength. * I projected my video The Sky’s A Limit (screensaver) (2021) as a backdrop.
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Karate Flower (2022) details. Japanese salvaged denim, polysether. Dimensions 270 x 110cm 5
My Dream Office: An Open Plan to the 3rd Location 17.11.21 - 16.11.21 Ian Wooldridge, William E Jones and Prem Sahib. Galerie Gregor Staiger, Milan. IT.
The Sky’s a Limit. (2021), HD Video 9’06” https://vimeo.com/647834226/2ee8e21941 * Fictional prose and the sublime create a narrative of retreat and reset with the phrase “today is day one” announcing each of the seven zones within the video. * Stock footage and stock sound interlace with original footage and voiceover/text. * The standardised atmosphere of the “stock” is perverted by the orginal footage & text. * The video features a social media face filter, created in collaboration with industrial designer Matthew Chen, of a satellite and pillow: objects of image projection.
Install shots.
Press: Architectural Digest: https://www.ad-italia.it/gallery/la-mostra-my-dream-office-trasforma-un-palazzo-milanese-in-una-porta-su-nuovi-e-antichi-mondi/ 6
Video stills: The Sky’s a Limit. (2021), HD Video 9’06”
The Sky’s a Limit. (2021) face filter: https://www.instagram.com/ar/1078817379620194/ << mobile device only. 3 touch evolution, antenna activated by opening mouth.>> 7
MIXED // VARIOUS // UNTITLED at Spazio Nico, Bari, IT. 04.12.2020 - 14.02.2021
Life Filters. (2020), HD Video 3`30” https://vimeo.com/479947114/adb015359d * A deconstructed “road movie” genre video. * Nostalgia and forensics. * Autofiction prologue: “I left home at 17. On the 9th of July 2018, having recently turned 36, I found myself sat in the back of my parent’s car driving from my sisters to London. The reduction of the backseat position inflaming past guilt, embarrassment and the muscle memory of lost control. We pass 2 trucks. One truck had crashed while the other waited patiently on the slip road. Written on both trucks the word: experience. One experience crashed, one experience waited patiently on the slip road.”
Video stills.
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Almusibli Panorama, Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva. September 2020.
HOMEBASE (2020) HD Video 5`54” https://vimeo.com/449646027/674488b0e8 * The foundation of HOMEBASE is a 3D scan of a failed utopic family home “Casa Sperimentale”. * It’s the typical derelict building one would come across in a lifestyle magazine. * A ruin for escape and projection. * The video unfolds with cyphered text and sound that are informed by personal adolescent history. * Negotiating the self with the universality of nostalgia.
Video stills.
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Ian Wooldridge. Curriculum Vitae.
Exhibitions, screenings and readings. 2022 Seggs & Unalive. Poesie bei Nacht. BACKROOMS. Solo reading/ performance event. Kunsthalle Zürich. CH. 2021 My Dream Office: An open plan to the 3rd location. Solo exhibition with inputs by William E Jones and Prem Sahib. Galerie Gregor Staiger, Milan. IT. Home Improvements. Duo exhibition with Jasmine Gregory. Paul Soto/ PARK VIEW, Brussels. BE. Soirée (before and after). Reading. Caberet Voltaire, Zurich, CH. LIVE SHOW the sound of men on cam by Li Tavor & Ian Wooldridge. Record launch and performance. OOR Records, Zurich. CH. 2020 MIXED// VARIOUS // UNTITLED. Group exhibition. Spazio Nico, Bari, IT. Look at me and say it Richard Serra. Solo exhibition. Rheumraum Institute, Basel, CH. HOMEBASE. Almusibli Panorama. Screening. Centre d’Art Contemporain, Geneva, CH. Echo Chambers. Text and video performance. On Reception, Kunsthalle Fribourg. CH. Infamy Effeminacy. Video screening, part of Derek Jarman, Les Archives. La Becque, CH. LIFE INSURANCE. Bailey Scieszkwa & Ian Wooldridge, A0 editions. Zurich, CH. 2019 loose homme. Reading event with Arcadia Missa at ICA, London. UK Retour à Rome. Group exhibition, Istituto Svizzero, Rome. IT The Holographic Circus. Solo exhibition. Maladie d’amour by Lili Reynaud Dewar, Grenoble. FR ultra-violence for those who qualify. Solo exhibition. Saint Luke, Zurich. CH Fragrant Hegemony. Reading. Paris Arts Lab, Nuit Blanche, Paris. FR Four Perspectives for the Blue Whale. Reading, performance and sound installation with Harry Burke, Marlie Mul & Mohammed Al-Musibli. Istituto Svizzero, Rome. IT 2018 Cruising Pavilion. Group exhibition.16th Venice Architecture Biennale, Venice. IT Image Reading. Group exhibition. Forde, Geneva. CH Edging. Group exhibition. Lux, London. UK The Photographic, group exhibition, Folkwang, Essen. DE 2017 The Swiss Art Awards. Group exhibition. Basel. CH Artist Talks. Art Taaalkkkks, Institut Kunst HGK FHNW, Basel, 2020 Practices and Performances of Madness in Visual Culture. Universität der Künste Berlin, 2019. Residencies. Artist in residence. Istituto Svizzero, Rome. 2018-19 Scholar in residence, Lux, London 2017 10
Appointments. 08.2016 – 01.2020 Lecturer: BA Fine Arts. ZHdK (Zurich University of the Arts). 50% Main responsibilities: Tutorials, crits and context modules. Director and Moderator of the public talk series: ART TALKS with internationally renowned guest artists, theorists and museum directors: Charles Atlas, CA Conrad, Laboria Cuboniks, Anne Imhof and Stefan Kalmar for example. Original course curricular written and taught for context modules: Border Traffic 1 intersections between experimental film and music. Border traffic 2 intersections between experimental film and poetry. Curating Queer Contexts. The Pavilion, in collaboration with Tom Emerson’s class, ETH architecture department. The Artist as Curator. Poetry and Diaristic practices. Negotiating Space and domestic environments. 08.2013 – 07.2016 Assistant Lecturer: MA Fine Arts. ZHdK (Zurich University of the Arts). 50% Main responsibilities: Tutorials, crits and context modules. Director of Symposium: Public Talks/ Private Affairs. 2016 With guests: Hannah Black, Vaginal Davis, Paul Pieroni, Steve Reinke & James Richards. Original course curricular written and taught: Queer Video (queer as a state of mind, video as a state of mind). Installation art and immersive environments. Art criticism, other text forms and essays published. Artforum (USA), Mousse (IT), Frieze (UK), Texte Zur Kunst (De), Brand New Life (CH), Istituto Svizzero, (IT). JRP-Ringier (CH), Les Temps (CH), Arcadia Missa publications (UK) Pilot Press, London (UK). (links available on website in contact section). Education. 09.2009 – 06.2011 MA History of Film and Visual Media. Birkbeck College, University of London. Prof Laura Mulvey and Prof Ian Christie. 09.2001 - 06.2004 BA (hon) Fine Art, Central St Martins, University of the Arts, London
Contact and links. irwoold@gmail.com +41 79 194 85 79 www.ianrwooldridge.com https://www.the-sound-of-men-on-cam.com
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