The Quarantine Ship (2013)
single screen video with sound
4 mins♦
The Quarantine Ship on Vimeo.
♦
The Quarantine Ship is part of a series of works, including Desert Island and We are Sorry, in Adam Chodzko’s major exhibition at Raven Row, London, We are Ready for Your Arrival , 2013 which unfolds as a series of events that arise from the apparent failure of a 60′ palm tree to arrive in time to be the central part of the exhibition.
The installation explores the materialisation, through objects, texts and images, of the processes of artistic creative production; its expectations, ambitions, coincidences, irrational leaps and failures. The manifestations of these experiences are then paralleled through references to environmental transformation and collapse.
The Quarantine Ship apparently shows the palm tree that failed to arrive to complete Desert Island, now apparently sick (infested with Red Palm Weevil) and in quarantine aboard a ship moored off-shore. Close shots show the palms’ fronds protruding from a hatch door interspersed with footage of waves and distant shots of the quarantine ship which appear to show it in motion, gently rocking, at sea despite visual clues that it is in fact entirely still and two dimensional and it is us who are somehow generating or needing this particular illusion.♦
