Ben Cain
Cain's work for Talk Show, entitled Last Stand for Solids, entailed three people performing a series of repeated actions in the ICA galleries intermittently throughout the day.
23 May 2009, Lower Gallery
Ben Cain is primarily involved in the production of installations, vinyl records, performances and printed matter, which deal with the convergence of theatre and documentary information, with a particular interest in facilitating and highlighting the viewer's role in the emergence of a subject. The work tends to be formed through the interplay of saying and doing, of production and description; where specific outcomes remain unstable and illusive.
For his event at the ICA, Cain created a work that entailed three people performing a series of repeated actions in the ICA galleries intermittently throughout the day. Holding up A0 size posters towards their audience, two individuals were accompanied for short periods of time by a drummer beating quick rhythms on a cymbal. The posters display text that discusses issues surrounding production, action and participation in a relatively casual, if slightly fragmented manner. It is the combination of the acts of reading, drumming, and the physical action of holding up the posters that makes for a temporarily tense scenario that dramatises the role of the viewer.