“It’s not just Coca-Cola and capitalism”, says Anna Zett about her work that crosses the colonial narratives of science, rationality and popular culture. As part of aqnb‘s ongoing video series made in collaboration with Video in Common, the Berlin-based artist behind “modern research drama” This Unwieldy Object talks about working with video as a medium and gathering empirical evidence of the attitudes and perspectives surrounding her chosen subjects, including dinosaurs, boxing and the brain.
Zett’s This Unwieldy Object debuted at London’s Extinction Marathon: Visions of the Future at Serpentine galleries in 2014, a 47-minute film tracking the artist on a research-driven road trip through the United States, and her encounters with the fossil traders, sculptors and scientists who have a hand in constructing its primordial history in the image of the country’s pro-colonial scientific ideology.
Often working with text and language as an imperial tool, the Leipzig-born artist is also responsible for the ‘DINOSAUR.GIF’ (2014) video lecture, which draws connections between a history of blockbuster film with capitalism, as well as spoken word presentations featured at London’s General Fine Arts ‘Values’ issue launch and Berlin’s After the Eclipse readings. Zett’s writing has also appeared in the The New Inquiry and Arcadia Missa’s How To Sleep Faster 5 and she presented an exhibition, performance and new video, Circuit Training at Banner Repeater, that closed in January 2016.**
Watch the video embedded above and see here for Part Two.
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Produced in partnership with Video in Common. This project has been made possible through the generous support of Arts Council England.
