STREETSPACE BANGER 
August 25th - November 10th 
2024




This work consists of found clips from rap videos, looping over original spoken word and noise production playing on an iPhone behind two privacy screen protectors, with residue of dried saline spray between them standing as a metaphor for dried tears. The phone is mounted to a mic stand, alongside a melted styrofoam cup with a headphone microphone in it. One of the clips from the video is from a music video recorded from jail by artist Glokk40spaz, using the app Triller.

Some of his earliest music was recorded using a headphone microphone inside of a paper cup (which I did to record the poem for this work). Referenced in the video by where I placed a headphone microphone in a cup and then poured acetone from a water bottle which then melts the Styrofoam of the cup, creating a sizzling sound picked up by the microphone, which was taken and looped for the video.

I find acetone in a water bottle being indistinguishable from water to be ominous, like the lack of access to safe food and water plaguing not only many prison facilities but black communities like flint Michigan that went years without clean water, only to have residents face legal repercussions for refusing to pay water bills for soiled water. Also in the video is a viral TikTok of someone preparing a “prison omelette” in a plastic bag with commissary items ( a topic Glokk40 has touched in lyrics before) while following instructions rapped in a song. In line with the traditions of black people hiding knowledge in music like the negro spirituals that guided people to freedom during slavery. The conditions in prisons that are many times overlooked, cause those incarcerated to get creative. The usage of blurred out footage in the video alludes to my hypothesis that censorship is an act of erasure of those affected, and protects the status quo.





Untitled Media Sculpture
2024
Mixed media
82cm x 56cm x 155cm

Untitled (shame wall)
2021-2024
Ink jet prints on copy paper, plastic document sleeves, tape 167.64 x 86.36 cm

on view as part of STREETSPACE BANGER 

STREETSPACE BANGER, a monumental group exhibition and institutional take-over in Germany.
From August to November 2024, TICK TACK (2019) and Kunsthalle Recklinghausen (1950) engage in an eminent exchange project: they swap locations. Under the title “ROKADE”-akin to the castling move in chess where players strategically swap the king and rook-both institutions are crossing borders and curate each other’s exhibition program.

At the historic Kunsthalle Recklinghausen, TICK TACK presents

“STREETSPACE BANGER,” a group show spanning all three floors of the former WWIl bunker. The exhibition unites over 50 artists from 20 countries, celebrating the interconnections that emerged from TICK TACK’s cultivated network and exhibition program. The total take-over of the Kunsthalle will also include new collaborations that reflect TICK TACK’s future vision and ethos as an institution.
Simultaneously, Kunsthalle Recklinghausen will disclose a selection from its 5,000-piece strong collection, featuring renowned artists such as Gerhard Richter, Alicja Kwade, Otto Piene or Ayse Erkmen. This collection will travel abroad for the first time as a curated project, presented in various adaptations at TICK TACK’s brutalist exhibition space in Antwerp. Apart from a few remarkable similarities —both are housed in postwar architectural heritage and are located across public transport hubs— it’s the drive to push the boundaries of traditional curatorial and institutional practices that bonds TICK TACK and Kunsthalle Recklinghausen. ROKADE prompts a rethinking of the dynamics between private and public spaces, models, scale and audience engagement. The collaboration bridges and blurs boundaries, fostering a richly rewarding cross-cultural dialogue between the two institutions and their regions.

with works by 

Alexandre Bavard
Richie Culver 
Jason Gringler 
Marie-Jo Lafontaine 
Joep van Liefland
Jon Rafman
Sally von Rosen
Michael Sailstorfer 
Narcisse Tordoir
Umut Yasat
Monsieur Zohore 

and many many more