Opening, March 15, 2007, 6 pm
Exhibition, March 16 – April 27, 2007
With the installation Hard Spell: A Promise to Generations, I would like to problematise the dramatic transformation of radical linguistics into the managerial language of media. The language of media plays an educational role as it increasingly controls the popular consciousness of developing generations. The initial idea for the project came from the BBC1 entertainment program Hard Spell, which was broadcast daily at 5.30 pm. in the UK in 2005. Hard Spell was a program devoted to a spelling competition between young children, and it featured the slogan, “Spelling is Compelling!” I perceived this program as a spectacular way of training children for the emergent global economy. In this economy, constraints provide new, restrictive methods of managerial learning and computability which are inseparable from their linguistic as well as “intellectual” foundations. With these questions as its basis, “Hard Spell” is the first of a series I am planning to create as an examination of the complexity of our times. (Z.A.)
Zeigam Azizov (b. 1963 in Aserbaidschan) lives and works in London.
www.zeigamazizov.com
Curated by Christian Kravagna and Hedwig Saxenhuber.
