Brandon Cramm: A Crypt of Living Timbre

A Crypt of Living Timbre is an exhibition of new video work and works of fiction by Brandon Cramm exploring notions of authorial silences, presence, and representations of the undead.

The focus of Cramm’s practice originates from a reflection on the role of the spectator and addressing shared relationships to images and media. This reflection is focused on how all objects, media, tools and social platforms have coded limits and bias toward certain types of actions, procedures, and content; all of which shape our versions of reality. Potentially limiting (if not for the ability to imagine other contexts and iterations), the ‘Law of Instrument’ warns, “If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” A foreseeable problem could be in the assumption of the observer’s ability to recognise the tool they are already so entangled with. An alternative statement might read, “If all you have is a nail, everything looks like a nail.” Or, even more deeply entangled, “If all a nail nails is a nail, nails nail like a nail.”

This entanglement is far less obvious when the act of mediation dissolves into the background of our user-experience, and may incite a greater attention toward the rhetoric and tools at hand, whether it be hammers or language. From the position of the spectator, a practice of recursive observation might bring into question, not only a world of performing objects, but also the subjectivity of the individual intertwined in it.

Accessibility note: A printed transcript of the video work will be available, there will be objects on the floor and the exhibition will have low lighting. CCA's full access guide can be found online here.