Current press release text
Karen Mirza and Brad Butler have worked together since 1998, and in 2004 formed no.w.here, an artist-run space for the production, discussion and dissemination of practices engaged with the moving image, politics, technology and aesthetics. www.no-w-here.org.uk no.w.here’s role as a cooperative environment is directly related to the centering of Mirza and Butler’s own practice upon collaboration, dialogue and the social. Since 2007 they have pursued a strain of practice entitled The Museum of Non Participation. The Museum of Non Participation is a collection of gestures, speech acts and audio-visual works which has thus far been presented in Egypt, Pakistan, Germany and the UK. The Museum consistently evolves through the geo-political ground upon which its works are produced and presented, in keeping with its initial formation.
Mirza and Butler are currently producing a new film, entitled Deep State, in collaboration with science fiction author China Mieville which takes its starting point in different moments of political struggle. A sister film to Deep State, Hold Your Ground will be presented as an Art on the Underground commission at Canary Wharf Tube Station April 25 - May 24 2012. Other upcoming projects include a Bookworks commission entitled Letters to the Left, an exhibition at the Walker Art Centre and a residency at SAVAC in Toronto in Autumn 2012. They are actively involved as member of the Precarious Workers Brigade; their political alignment directly informs not only the content of their work but their collective approach to production.
Works courtesy of
Waterside Contemporary (London)
Galeri Non (Istanbul)
Website Background:
Early works often emerged from their interest in seminal avant-garde film. Non Places (1999), for example, is a contemporary take on the constructivist films of the 1920s and in Where a Straight Line Meets a Curve (2003) the artists drew inspiration from the use of resonant frequencies from Alvin Lucier’s 'I am Sitting in a Room' (1970). Mirza / Butler often take a single visual observation as a point of departure, such as the space between tower blocks in The Space Between (2005), the gesture of performing a 360 degree walking rotation with a camera in Structural Constellation (2006) or the cinematic principles inherent in photo realist painting in The Glass Stare (2006). From these initial images, Mirza and Butler intertwine a range of visual and conceptual languages, combining analytical and experimental sequences to create open-ended works. This includes The autonomous object? (2009) The Museum of non Participation and The Exception and the Rule
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