Shadow Inhaler    (1994)

Shadow Inhaler    (1994)

Advertisements placed by Adam Chodzko in Loot classified advertisements paper, pages from Loot, ink and zotefoam.
54 x 39cm
8 versions 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 Carpets’ 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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As a form of public performance and story-telling Adam Chodzko placed a series of eight different advertisements in different sections of Loot (a classified advertisements paper) during the course of June 1994 to create Shadow Inhaler.  Each advertisement requested a gun, of gradually increasing size and power, starting with a small pistol at the beginning of June and building up to an anti-tank gun at the end of that month.  This narrative sequence suggested that the narrator (ie; the artist, as ‘advertiser’) was experiencing a growing level of anxiety and delusion and so was attempting to signal their emotional state to others. The eight signals emitted can be seen as a form of symptom.  Because of their illegality each advertisement  required camouflaging through their descriptions, so as to make them appear safe and innocuous. This method ‘concealed’ these firearms within awkwardly phrased requests for innocent and banal everyday household objects and include oddly specific details.  Each advert ends with the refrain  ‘…good price paid.  Call  [Chodzko’s home phone number in 1994].’
The reality of these weapons in relation to the absurdity of these expressions of desire for them, along with the foolishness of siting this project within an everyday classified ads paper, was intended to produce an outburst of laughter in the viewer; A release of pent up energy. The zotefoam frames for each page were intended as a container for specialist equipment, the advertisement becoming object. This foam ‘padding’ was also present to absorb the text and drawing’s 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 to be an artwork that could enter everyday public space before ending up in a gallery.  Unsurprisingly nobody responded to Chodzko’s advertisements’ requests.  The psychological impact of this silence became part of the crime-fiction narrative prompting the growing perception that something ‘bigger’ was therefore needed. The action of drawing a shadow of the described  gun on the Loot page became a further response to the lack of satiation;  Like making a doodle while waiting, trying to visualise the gratification of the absurd desire to make it more tangible.
Shadow Inhaler is important within Chodzko’s practice as an example of a work where the artist/author/Adam Chodzko is creating the artwork ‘in character’, with the invented persona, and therefore voice, of a narrator.  But he was also trying to address his own very real social anxiety. 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 reaction.

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As two different works exploring a psychological surreality to consumer culture, Shadow Inhaler was first exhibited along with Product Recall, at Chodzko’s graduation exhibition for the MFA Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, University of London.