KatharineDwyer
'The Unspeakable Freedom Device'
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Film screening and artist talk at Chelsea College of Art
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3 March 2016
This work is a fable of one young woman’s quest to find a "blu-lady" in an off-kilter Thatcher era. It examines politics, the creation of cultural narrative and more contemporary fears such as surveillance and the impact of technology.
This bizarre reality is rich with meaning to decode: an RGB colour scheme, a folk aesthetic, plastic props, intentionally low budget effects. As in other works, such as School of Change, peculiar conventions allow Thomas to join disparate ideas and comment on the strangeness of the real world where a more sober production might not.
Still from the 'Unspeakable Freedom Device' (2015) Courtesy of Jennet Thomas
Broken signs, language, and meaning “not being what it was” is a central motif. Dialogue contorts to satirise the hyperbole, exhortation and platitudes of powerful individuals and institutions. But where corporate slogans use an ultimately empty newspeak, Thomas’s characters’ superficially foreign vocabulary instead comprises layers of ambiguity and meaning to be unpacked and considered.
This ‘language made alien’ forces the viewer to pause and grasp at understanding. To spend time with our understanding of meaning, the opposite to that which our slippery hyperactive modern world usually requires.
One such is the titular ‘unspeakable freedom device,’ an eerily plausible catchphrase. A metaphor for magical technology now so advanced we cannot understand its workings. The name conjures questions: are our devices useful or a corporate plot contrivance in our lives?
From a 1980s standpoint, technology’s impact on our modern lives was certainly inconceivable. There is an implicit menace in the conjunction ‘unspeakable freedom.' Is liberty to be found via a smart device, or tyranny? The debate in the real world continues, but here, a populace made reliant on random air drops of neon sustenance implies the latter.
Background: Still from the 'Unspeakable Freedom Device' (2015) Courtesy of Jennet Thomas
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