Ed Atkins at Chisenhale

Ed Atkins
Us Dead Talk Love
21 September - 11 November 2012

I was one of the early ones to arrive at the Chisenhale Gallery tonight, when still only a few were waiting for their friends to show outside this old brick warehouse on the eponymous street in East London. Later on the crowds would swell and grow as the day grew fainter, a mixture of new kids on the block (‘emerging’ artists?) and art professors, real intellectuals. I got a kick out of seeing Oscar Murillo there, and immediately Columbian music and fond memories of endless champagne and fruit tarts (less endless, though very tasty) at his recent ‘performance’ at the Serpentine pavilion came to mind. By the amount of Goldsmiths students here, I can tell that Atkins is held in high regard, he’s brought out a crowd of a certain pedigree.

In the rear gallery space the artist’s video Us Dead Talk Love was already playing on loop. Two big screens are set up at one end of the room, angled slightly towards each other, and around the other half of the room, 8’ high panels leant against the wall, with what appeared to be large black and white photocopies of pillows and beds affixed to their surface with masking tape. The space is a classic white cube (or rectangle) lined up in the centre were several rows of chairs, and it’s quickly filling with people. There’s a surround sound system which really helps to complement the high-tech animated head in the video (described ominously in the statement as a cadaver), whose voice is filling the space with meandering thoughts about love, hair, eyelashes, foreskin and relationships.

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It’s the next day now, and I’m reflecting back on the show. It leaves me apathetic. My first response on being in the space was to be dazzled, or at least placated, by the CGI-animated head, the well-mixed and very hip music, and the excellent quality of the sound system and fabrication of the screens. But the length of the work begins to wear on you. The superficial, visual elements are consistent throughout, there is not really any narrative, beginning, middle or end. I can only hope that it is the artist’s intention to test the viewer’s patience for what could best described as a monologue by a self-obsessed, decently-educated though highly unoriginal, somewhat-read, spoiled, depressive, young British man. The face only makes a limited range of movements, so that I’m constantly aware of its repetitiousness, this guy only has a few moves. I’m left wondering if this is what it’s like to be the girlfriend of a young, emotionally fragile, yet egotistical, male artist.  There are brief choirs of (digitally produced?) voices that repeat certain words as this whinger regales us with his inner monologue about relationships and ‘intimacy’ without much content or thoughtfulness beyond the solipsistic enjoyment of the sound of his own voice, which is so carefully edited in all of its insipidity.


I haven’t seen Atkins work in person before. Others tell me that this piece is very similar to previous work, that the themes are a continuation, however, at around 40 minutes, a much longer one. One would expect that length would create the opportunity to explore a structure or at least a progressive arc. The lack of any modulation and the monotony of the voice (although carefully delivered and accompanied by music which reminded me of recent Eddie Peake performances at Cell Project Space and the Tate Tanks), initiated in me a slow build-up of annoyance and mild disdain.

So what does this work say about the world? As I look back on what I’ve written now I feel a bit silly for having been drawn into what is quite frankly an emotional judgement of an avatar, but maybe that’s the point. This could be our digital future. Better music, higher resolution, but still modelled on essentially flawed human personalities. This may well be the malfunctioning disk for ‘hipster boyfriend circa 2012’ that in the future we might insert into our i-players for company or to let us live an ‘experience’ for kicks. What is the future of intimacy in a technologically mediated world? Indeed, Atkins has used the medium most suited to drawing out the complications of progress. We push technology further every day, yet we remain still limited and flawed, tied to our repetitive and unoriginal drives and typical psychological hang-ups. The capabilities of technology are in high contrast with the fallibility of the mind and ego.

The end of the night.