"Control Mechanisms"
This series of paintings, prints and sculptural/sound installations began in 1991 and is on-going.
Inspired by the RFID chips which are found in books and CDs to track stock and prevent theft, the works also reference labyrinths, Zen gardens, US geometrical abstract painting from the 1940s to Peter Halley, and texts by Michel Foucault and Paolo Virno dealing with issues of surveillance and social control.
The paintings are worked on by both artists, painting in layers on the same canvas. The sculptural installations are made from artificial rocks with speakers, shredded paper (sometimes confidential papers, love-letters, bank statements etc), sometimes provided by the public in situ during the exhibition, sometimes shredded in the gallery as a performance. The sound tracks of whispered male and female voices narrate paranoid fears and anxieties about surveillance and control from everyday life. The exhibition in Prague (2011-12) also included printed QR codes which linked to paranoid words and phrases in Czech.