Tracey Rose
Shooting Down Babylon (The Art of War) (2016)
Commissioned for the Biennial of Moving Image in Geneva in 2016, the installation was premiered on the unreal and dispiriting day after the night Donald Trump won the US presidential election. The work examines gestures, codes, rites and rituals. Rose undertook an Ayahuasca ceremony (a purification ritual from the Amazon) in preparation for the filming of the four videos displayed here, as well as making pilgrimages to several healers and mystics around South Africa. The result was a single, intense night of solitary meditation and spiritual communing, with cameras recording throughout.
The monitors display sequences shot by cameras attached to Rose’s body and placed in her immediate surroundings while she performed ‘backyard dances’ and feature the voices of participants in the Ayahuasca ceremony. The work acts as an entrance to the exhibition, a womb-like yet ceremonial starting point, and a first clue to the multiple layers encouraged by Rose’s combinations of digital, analogue, theatrical, mystical and subversive elements.