Karaoke (2014). Two-channel video installation, incorporating two large-scale curved sound dampening sculptural walls and diffused daylight, with two Sony Trinitron 29” Television Monitors displaying Black & White Standard Definition Analogue Video with Sync 5.1 Surround Sound. Duration 16min variable on continuous loop. Dimensions variable.

'Karaoke' is a two-channel video installation addressing the materiality of the televisual image as a critical and affective site of interrogating duration and choreography in the transmission of history. Engaging with a particular historical video recording, one without provenance, the work depicts a choreography and close-up of hands examining and dissecting the mummified remains of an anonymous cadaver. The project investigated the potential for this material, through editing and sound design, to develop into a contemporary reflexive position of an image interrogating its own surface materiality.

Presented as a large-scale installation in the solo exhibition ‘Mirror Speech’, the work featured a two-channel video installation framed by two curved modular walls, its gradient grey fabric creating an acoustically dead space, alongside a glazed wall framing a second elevated monitor using dense opaque film to diffuse external light into the space, enabling the work to modulate between different iterations of morgue and television studio environments.

The solo exhibition ‘Mirror Speech’ was at BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Level 2 Gallery between 31-October 2014 and 11-January 2015.

• Pickering, Gail. 2014. Mirror Speech [Solo Exhibition]. In: "Gail Pickering Solo Exhibition Mirror Speech", BALTIC Centre for Contemporary Art, Gateshead, United Kingdom, 31 October 2014 - 11 January 2015. [Show/Exhibition]

https://research.gold.ac.uk/id/eprint/24836