Stephen Rennicks - 'Junk out of Context'

'Junk out of Context' was a year long project (2004 - 2005) where the artist Stephen Rennicks, while still working under the name Secret Society, would first buy audio and video stock from Dublin charity shops and then remix and recycle them in various ways. The resultant sound and video pieces would then be put onto audio cassette, CDR or VHS video formats and then deposited back to the same shops without asking the permission of the staff. Each piece was identified with a sticker leading to a website explaining the project. There were various themes and layers of meaning worked into this project; the most obvious and surface being about the missing context of many of the items found in charity shops was explored via tape collage on all the audio cassette pieces; the loss of personal history in these discarded items was dealt with by using ambient electronics on the CDR formats and the general mystery surrounding these items provenance was sought on the VHS video's. Art out of context, the value of art and an audience discovering the work for themselves were also elements of the project. The more general search for the intangible, which is something we seem to spend our lives doing, was also in there. For a good few months the Irish Times brought it all to the publics attention by listing it as an ongoing project. To mark the end of the project there was a performance at the Lazybird club upstairs in the International Bar on Wicklow St., in Dublin where the artist DJ'ed parts of all of the sound pieces from his laptop as a loop of the video works was projected. The sound pieces were also compiled on two CD's and released as 'Junk out of Context' Vol. 1 (Tape Collage) and Vol. 2 (Ambient Electronics) on Ancient Records in 2005. Well over 50 new audio and video pieces were made during this time and multiple copies were made and distributed. The edited piece used for this video, 'French by Osmosis', is one of the artists favourites and one of the most successful in exploring this loss of context. It comes from a French language tape and a record by some French singer. I have always been amazed at the unlikely things which have come into my life through charity and second-hand shops, in a consumer world of increasing narrowness of choice I see them as the most likely places for synchronicities through material goods to occur. It's also certainly a place where we are reminded that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
http://www.stephenrennicks.webs.com

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