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a woman with brown hair wearing a cream sweater and black pants laying on her side on a black stage.

Patricia L Boyd's EMPAC commission "Operator" to show at NYU

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New York-based British artist Patricia L. Boyd will exhibit Operator (2017), a single-channel video, at New York University's 80wse Gallery between September 23 and November 11. The video was produced through a moving image commission from EMPAC / Curtis R. Priem Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

Positioned in a space not much wider than a corridor, the video—which Boyd refers to as an ‘exhaustion engine’—is structured according to a rule-based scheme whereby the duration of each section is determined by the mathematical calculations of a specific loan repayment plan. Both debt and interest are payable quarterly over a period of three years and three months, which is the interval of time since she started preliminary research towards the commission. Sections of footage are carved up according to one parameter, namely the amount of debt that has been paid at whatever moment the ‘payment’ appears in the duration of the video (12 min 56 seconds, looped).

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September 15, 2017