Shadow Inhaler    (1994)

Shadow Inhaler    (1994)

Pages from Loot, paint and zotefoam.
54 x 39cm
8 images in the series

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A list of the Shadow Inhaler advertisements in chronological order:
1) Vest Pocket Bernadelli in the Men’s Clothing section.  3rd/4th June 1994
Vest Pocket Bernadelli required, in good condition, standard size, good price paid, call… etc 
2) Ruger Single Six in the Rugs and Carpet section.  5th/6th June 1994
Ruger Single Six, needed, clean and in reasonable condition only, dark colours only, good price paid, call… etc
3) Gyrojet in the Gardening section.  10th/11th June 1994
Gyrojet with cleanly operating nozzle wanted, must have powerful range, good price paid, call… etc
4) Hammerli in the Tools and DIY section.
5) Krag-Jorgensen in the Camping and Outdoor section.  19th/20th June 1994
Krag-Jorgensen for short expedition, any one will do but must be 6.5mm and lightweight, good price paid, call… etc
6) Armalite in the Lights and light fittings section.  22nd June 1994
Armalite from mid 1950’s, with gas operation and collapsible fittings needed urgently, good price paid, call… etc
7) Minimi in the Baby section.
Minimi required urgently, preferably with silencer and robust spring, rain cover not necessary, good price paid, … etc
8) Crystolbal in the Astrology and Prediction section.  30th June 1994
Crystobal urgently required, Dominican preferably, but any will do as long as sights are unimpaired, good price paid, … etc

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To create Shadow Inhaler Adam Chodzko placed, as a form of public performance, a series of eight different advertisements in different sections of Loot (a classified advertisements paper) during the course of June 1994.  Each advertisement requested a gun, of gradually increasing size and power, from a small pistol building to an anti-tank gun by the end of June.  This narrative sequence suggested that the narrator (advertiser) was experiencing a growing level of anxiety and delusion. The eight signals emitted were a form of symptom.  Each illegal advertisement was camouflaged through a particular use of language in their descriptions making them seem safe and innocuous. This method concealed these firearms within awkwardly phrased requests for innocent and banal everyday household objects with oddly specific details.  Each advert ends with the refrain  ‘…good price paid.  Call  [Chodzko’s home phone number in 1994].’
The reality of the weapon in relation to the precarity and absurdity of its expression of desire, along with the foolishness of the siting of this project, was intended to produce an outburst of laughter in the viewer. A release of pent up energy. The zotefoam frames to each advertisements were also both a container for a specialist equipment , the advertisement becoming object, as well as to absorb its repressed or released energy.  As with his Transmitter series and The God Look Alike Contest (both of which also used Loot) Chodzko intended Shadow Inhaler as an artwork that could enter everyday public space before ending up in a gallery.  Unsurprisingly nobody responded to the request.  The psychological impact of this silence was the perceived growth in the need for something ‘bigger’.  The action of drawing a shadow of the described  gun on the Loot page became a further response to the lack of satiation.  A doodle while waiting, while trying to imagine the gratification of the desire.
Shadow Inhaler is important within Chodzko’s practice as a clear example of a work where the artist/author/Adam Chodzko is creating the artwork ‘in character’, with the particular invented voice and persona of a narrator. Made at the same time as Product Recall , and the Secretors series Shadow Inhaler arose from a combination of influences such as the emergence of the repressed, the notion of the stain, the aberration, Slavoj Zizek’s ‘Looking Awry‘, detective, ghost, horror and science fiction stories (particularly J.G. Ballard), and an overall feeling of paralysis and dread as manifested in David Lynch’s ‘Twin Peaks’ series, first screened on UK television in the early 1990’s.  That period was also haunted by the legacy of Thatcherism, recession, the Gulf War, and the continual sporadic terrorist attacks in London. It was Chodzko’s recognition of how normalised the expectation of the latter had become in his own daily life that directly led to Shadow Inhaler.  The God Look Alike Contest can be seen as a form of everyday spiritual response to that experience of living in London during those times, Product Recall an ecstatic, carnivalesque and resistant response, and a year later, Involva, a further manifestation of an ecstatic, sexual and ‘pagan’ form of response.