New online project by Garrett Phelan

Garrett Phelan - an Irish artist based in Dublin who just participated in our 'Competitive Landscapes' programme - has produced a new online audio project titled 'At what point will common sense prevail'. It's a brilliant reconfiguration of texts from online chat rooms (initiated by the artist) which are then read by lots of different people in different languages. The topics for discussion vary from 'The absolute present' to 'The colour black'. The texts are fragmented, which serves to strip them of complete coherency, so we're left to assemble what sense we can from them by listening in a new way, as amateur polyglots or naive idealists. It's a brilliant investigation of how we construct meaning out of what we're given to work with and raises all kinds of ideas about being on the point of understanding. The end result after spending time with the pieces brings you to a point of supersaturation, where meaning becomes fully activated yet somehow empty.

The project will be available online for five years here.

And you can check out more of Garrett's work here.