Produced off-site at the City Observatory by Collective, Staged was a multi-channel video installation combining live and pre-recorded footage, transforming Edinburgh during the festival into a mise-en-scene and its visitors and locals into players.

Many of Kim Coleman & Jenny Hogarth’s videos and performances involve visual simile or metaphor through the abstraction of everyday objects and actions. Fundamental elements of light and dark are prevalent and Staged drew on the original use of the venue, using the devices of mirroring, repetition and reflection to capture the complex relationship the city has with performance, heightening viewers’ awareness of the staging of the Edinburgh Festival.

Videos projected within the work blurred the boundaries between the abstract and the representational. The funfair of the festival was viewed as if through a Claude glass, abstracting and transfiguring the intricate carnival within it, with human adventurous playful qualities.

Symposium

How to inform without informing, City Observatory, Calton Hill, 30 July 2010, 4—6pm
To celebrate the launch of two new commissions, Collective devised a
symposium with exhibiting artists Hito Steyerl, Kim Coleman & Jenny Hogarth and other speakers including theorist Alfredo Cramerotti (author of Aesthetic Journalism), Francis McKee (curator and writer) and Lisa Panting (Director of Picture This, Bristol), chaired by Ian White (LUX, London).

Read the Staged publication here

Part of: