Bursting in air
Site specific video installation with
5.1 audio, printed matter, wood, 2022
Presented in partnership with LAND
(Los Angeles Nomadic Division)
January 6–January 27, 2022
1035 S. Broadway Avenue
Downtown Los Angeles
Contralto: Gwendolyn Brown
Curatorial essay by Irina Gusin
Transcripts of testimonies by four Washington, D.C.
police officers, to House Select Committee
Hearing Investigating January 6, 2021
(July 27, 2021). Download pdf here
Bursting in air occupied a vacant ground floor space in Downtown Los Angeles for three weeks starting on January 6, 2022. Set against the backdrop of chi-chi-fying Broadway Ave, just south of Olympic, this work is a dirge-like, metaphoric response to the attempted coup one year ago in the United States and events leading up to it—a coup attempt that directly correlates with the more general state of play in 21st century America: an accumulation of hundreds of years of disenfranchisement, disempowerment, and disrepair, spurred by racism and greed, bound to each other but by no means mutually exclusive. The soundtrack—spread across multiple speakers throughout the space—features the haunting voice of contralto Gwendolyn Brown. Framing the video projection itself are simple wood tables which hold collated transcripts of testimonies delivered in 2021 by four police officers in front of the House Select Committee Hearing Investigating January 6, 2021. These transcripts were offered to viewers as take-away printed matter.
The project was presented in partnership with LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division), which in 2017 commissioned and presented Silton’s much heralded work, Quartet for the End of Time, as part of its multi-artist project Exchange Value 2017–2018.
Artist’s walkthrough video documentation. More documentation coming soon.
Photography: Ian Byers-Gamber