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ArchiveBorn in 1964 in Newcastle, Australia
Ian Burns’ kinetic dioramas and video feed works have engaged with subjects as diverse as the war in Iraq, TV culture, colonialism, and art history. Using primitive electronics, household objects and other assorted junk, Burns creates absurdly convoluted mechanisms whose purpose is to produce a simple moving image on a screen, either by live video fed to a monitor, or as a shadow theater-like diorama.
Fascinating and darkly humorous, Burns’ works directly explore the gap between how images are constructed and how they are consumed. His sublime video landscapes, constituted by the objectifying eye of a camera lens, often turn out to be mere chimera conjured by the instrumentalizing forces of global capitalism. Regular activities such as driving through the city at night are rendered absurd, mythologized beyond hope by the cinematic narratives from which we are powerless to extricate ourselves.
 Ian Burns, The Way We Know It - Surrounded Islands (Version 1) - Keep it clean and organized, Mixed media kinetic sculpture, producing live video feed, 2007 |
