The Golden USB (2017)
The Golden USB
Solo Exhibition
Agnes Etherington Art Gallery
Kingston, Canada
Curated by Sunny Kerr
26 August - December 3, 2017
Through spoken-word audio, filmed performances and specimens, contents of the Trade Catalogue of Everything are revealed. Displayed as objects of appropriation and speculation, these are samples from a USB-ready “commercial” list addressed to extraterrestrial beings. With reference to NASA’s 1977 Voyager Golden Record, The Golden USB captures land, water, air, plants, animals, and fragments of nature, along with human culture, industry and invention. In considering the prospect of interstellar trade, Richard Ibghy and Marilou Lemmens raise timely questions about the limits of commodification, including the ownership of the Earth and its life forms.
The collaborative duo Ibghy and Lemmens is the inaugural Stonecroft Foundation Artist-in-Residence, hosted in collaboration with Queen’s Film and Media. The artists visited Kingston for research and production phases, beginning in mid-March. They have collected “entries” from a diverse group of artists, technicians, poets and scholars to create this new chapter of their ongoing project.
Work presented: The Golden USB.
The artists would like to thank the following individuals who have generously contributed their ideas to this iteration of The Golden USB: Mary Louise Adams, Anne-Marie Bennet, Alexander Braun, Maxime Chouinard, Marc Epprecht, Allison Goebel, Bronwyn Jaques, Lauren Jaques, Robert Lovelace, Robin Alex McDonald, Sadiqa de Meijer, Allison Morehead, Dave Rappaport, Jenny Stepa, Amanda White, and Bernard Ziomkiewicz.
The artists would like to acknowledge Alexander Braun for translating the “Message” into sounds and signals and for realising the video “Translation Services,” Sadiqa de Meijer for her performance in “The Reproduction of Vibratory Patterns, Pitches and Types of Sounds Found in the Dutch Language,” Bernard Ziomkiewicz for his performance in “Instruments That Measure Things,” and Sébastien and Kevin Rodgers for their collaboration in filming “Sébastien and Kevin”.
