The White Queen

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James B. L. Hollands – The White Queen

Audio/video with text, 30 minutes, UK 2012.

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Location: DIVUS London, Enclave 5, Resolution Way, London, SE8 4NT

Private View : Friday 27th July 6-last orders

Date/Times: 27th July to 26th August 2012 – Wed to Sat from 12am to 6pm. 

The White Queen is an audiovisual symphony, comprising seven movements which Hollands states: ‘is a neo-transcendental symbolist tragedy’ taking the form of an immersive multimedia installation.

The symbolist narrative begins with a discussion between stars that proclaim a desire to save the life of a human on Earth – who is seemingly headed on an irresolvable pathway to suicide (‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, Liberty Films 1946 with James Stewart).  

The viewer is invited to lie on a grass lawn on the gallery floor and stare into an artificial cosmos projected onto the ceiling. The undulating pulsations of this synthetic starscape are digitally generated by an orchestral score that owes as much to hip-hop and grime as to Terry Riley, Glenn Branca and Michael Gira. The visuals take us on a journey through space where we witness the nebulaic creation of a black hole in which alternative galaxies explode and then gradually dissolve into an abstract nothingness. 

The White Queen conjoins hearing and seeing into a syncretic universe; a near synaesthesic experience, acting as neither a mirror nor a window to reality. The viewer is invited to suspend disbelief and regard a sympathetic universe that cares about human existence so much that it is prepared to arrange itself into an orgy of symphonic audio visual pleasure for our express enjoyment – a rejection of Quentin Meillasoux’s statement that the universe ‘is not for us’, and a blissed-out reversal of the humiliation afforded to the human by the Copernican revolution.

For Hollands, the idea of a ‘White Queen’ represents a desire to return to the "white light at the mouth of infinity” – a past and future destruction;  the Big Bang. The light of the stars, travelling across vast space, can only ever be as facile as a T.V. image. What we are seeing is an image of something that has already ceased to exist. To paraphrase Ray Brassier: the universe is ‘already dead’. And watching it die, with us still in it, is a very beautiful experience.

Hollands is an artist, writer and musician based in London.

‘I know this isn't technically correct

I have actually researched this project

I know my science is flawed

And this is just allegory

I know

Their universe is expanding.

But mine isn't.’

- J B L Hollands, 2012

More about DIVUS London:

DIVUS London (www.divus.org.uk) is a publishing company specialising in art books and related exhibitions and events. It has published the notorious journal Umelec covering Central European, Eastern European, and Balkan Art since the 90’s, and which now offers a hard-edged political perspective on the global art scene. DIVUS has offices in Prague and Berlin, has recently opened its new London office and permanent exhibition space at Enclave, Resolution Way, SE8 4NT (Deptford).

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