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Video/sound installation
(1986/2005/2007)
Push comes to Shove is an installation which superimposes ‘found’ soundtracks onto 2
Super-8 films shot by Hawrysio in the 80s. The films were part of a series made by
attaching the camera to various machines or devices; in each case an invitation was made
to the operator(s) of the devices to participate in the making of a film. There is no editing
or manipulation of the footage outside of the camera. The soundtracks are unmanipulated
clips from a suspicious telephone conversation found on a cassette tape bought for 25
cents from a street vendor in New York City and a police radio recording made in the South
London squat in which the artists lived using an old hi-fi receiver found on the street. The
speakers used in the installation were found on the streets of London. It’s up to the viewer
to decide which soundtrack goes with which film.
Denise Hawrysio obtained her MFA in film installation from the San Francisco Art Institute. She is
currently artist-in-residence at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, where she is working on a
new series of large-scale etchings. Her recent solo show at Simon Fraser University, Situational Prints,
was a retrospective of her conceptual printmaking projects: “Hawrysio’s decision to continue with imagery
saturated in ‘imprint’ and ‘touch’ is strengthened by her entanglement with critical conceptualism, both as
an aesthetic attitude and as politics.” (Ian Wallace) She has taught at the Architectural Association and at
the University of the Arts London and was course leader in print and digital arts at Wimbledon School of
Art. Last year she received the Putnam Fellowship from the prestigious MacDowell Art Colony in the US
and recently curated and participated in 15/1(3) at Overgaden, Institute of Contemporary Art in
Copenhagen.
John Wynne has a PhD in sound art from Goldsmiths College. He was artist-in-residence for one year at
Harefield Hospital, one of the world’s leading heart and lung transplant centres, which has given rise to
pieces for the BBC and for CBC in Canada, a surround-sound video shown at TATE Britain, an installation
for the Old Operating Theatre Museum (December 2007) and a photographic sound installation with
photographer Tim Wainwright (2008). His work with endangered click-languages resulted in an award-
winning ‘composed documentary’ for Radio 3 and an installation shown in Botswana, Namibia and
London. He has created large-scale sound installations in public squares using alarm sounds of his
own design: one was banned by the City of Copenhagen for allegedly “frightening and confusing the
public” and another in Toronto described as “an ambient, ghost-like presence”. He has created
installations from hundreds of discarded but working hi-fi speakers: Fallender ton für 207 lautsprecher
boxen in Berlin sounded “like Heaven …and Hell”.
www.hawrysio.com
John Wynne:
www.sensitivebrigade.com