What Is An Apparatus? (2016-2017) (Still) by Sean Lynch. Courtesy the artist, Kevin Kavanagh Gallery, Dublin, and Ronchini Gallery, London
Editor: old news
Aidan Dunne, From the Burren to Belfast: Sean Lynch removes our heritage from its neat packaging, The Irish Times, Feb 28, 2017
Lynch leaves us pondering on a kind of cultural uncertainty principle, and that notion carries over into his video fables in What Is an Apparatus? The title is taken from an essay by Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben. The apparatus or dispositif in question is the late Michel Foucault’s vaguely defined but often-used term. Agamben proposes that it is any of myriad constructions, including cultural and technological constructions, that have the capacity to influence, persuade, control or divert our judgment, behaviour and perceptions. The smartphone is an obvious and extreme example.
Now that looks like an awesome exhibition. I wonder: how do viewers view it, how do people encounter it?