IN ORDER FOR IT TO CHANGE
Peter Spanjer
September 24 - October 27
Installation images
Peter Spanjer (B. 1994, Germany) currently lives and works in London, UK. Peter graduated with a BA degree in Fashion Promotion from the University for the Creative Arts, UK in 2015 and an MA in Contemporary Art Practice: Moving Image from the Royal College of Art, UK.
His work is often framed around but not limited to the idea of resistance; resisting the emotional stereotypes put on black men; resisting the need to perform his blackness to others and thereby allowing room for self-exploration which he extends to an audience as a piece of visual art.
In Order For It To Change is a new installation by Peter Spanjer (b.1994, Germany) inviting viewers to embrace vulnerability in a world that’s increasingly hostile towards it. The work acts as an attempt to reconcile oneself with perpetual motion, accepting a need for stillness and advocating for value in reflection. In order for it to change, you’ve got to surrender. Hope for a brighter future comes with inevitable darkness, but those lower moments act as fertile ground for growth.
The installation consists of a three channel video collage and single channel sound work. The source imagery, a combination of found and self-shot footage, explores the psychological dissonance of transcendence, considered in three parts: spiritual, emotional and self-conceptualised.
Religious worship establishes an aesthetic for a search for spiritual transcendence - markers for a surrendering of corporeal desire, in favour of an intangible closeness to something beyond the self.
Emotional transcendence focuses on allowing oneself to experience negative states, to accept those states as essential parts of the human experience with their own intrinsic value.
Considering transcendence as a permanent state of being necessitates an alternate conceptualisation of the self, internally. This is the value in negative states of being, the dualism of experience as something beyond resolution, surrendering oneself to growth as an act of empathy outside of capital.
The viewer navigates the installation through three glowing screens installed in blackout boxes, floating in space. Positioned at alternating heights, force the viewer to navigate throughout the space, identifying the relationship between the images playing across the three panels as they shift between representations of absolute hope and absolute hopelessness. The accompanying audio contextualization video collages within a contemporary language of transcendence, value and surrender beyond the self.
His work is often framed around but not limited to the idea of resistance; resisting the emotional stereotypes put on black men; resisting the need to perform his blackness to others and thereby allowing room for self-exploration which he extends to an audience as a piece of visual art.
In Order For It To Change is a new installation by Peter Spanjer (b.1994, Germany) inviting viewers to embrace vulnerability in a world that’s increasingly hostile towards it. The work acts as an attempt to reconcile oneself with perpetual motion, accepting a need for stillness and advocating for value in reflection. In order for it to change, you’ve got to surrender. Hope for a brighter future comes with inevitable darkness, but those lower moments act as fertile ground for growth.
The installation consists of a three channel video collage and single channel sound work. The source imagery, a combination of found and self-shot footage, explores the psychological dissonance of transcendence, considered in three parts: spiritual, emotional and self-conceptualised.
Religious worship establishes an aesthetic for a search for spiritual transcendence - markers for a surrendering of corporeal desire, in favour of an intangible closeness to something beyond the self.
Emotional transcendence focuses on allowing oneself to experience negative states, to accept those states as essential parts of the human experience with their own intrinsic value.
Considering transcendence as a permanent state of being necessitates an alternate conceptualisation of the self, internally. This is the value in negative states of being, the dualism of experience as something beyond resolution, surrendering oneself to growth as an act of empathy outside of capital.
The viewer navigates the installation through three glowing screens installed in blackout boxes, floating in space. Positioned at alternating heights, force the viewer to navigate throughout the space, identifying the relationship between the images playing across the three panels as they shift between representations of absolute hope and absolute hopelessness. The accompanying audio contextualization video collages within a contemporary language of transcendence, value and surrender beyond the self.