ECSTATIC results from a discussion between visual artist Russell Perkins, writer and law researcher Aurelia Guo, and curator Salomé Burstein. It is centered around Static (2023), a video made by Perkins in collaboration with sound designer Charlie Culbert and which Guo was invited to respond to with a new piece entitled I want our nation to grow (2024).

Through found text and footage, both works look into festive, patriotic and ideologically loaded images and paraphernalia. Investigating the rituals and rhetorics which a nation-state relies on to perform and reproduce itself, Perkins and Guo question the crafting of a national, “collective body” in its relation to self-celebration and perpetuation; sameness within moments of ecstasy.

With a poster and the first Shmooks (Shmorévaz books) publication designed by Martin Desinde.

ECSTATIC
Russel Perkins
Text by Aurelia Guo
26.09-23.10.2024
Curated by Salomé Burstein
Assisted by Alexis De Bonis