Image
Gerard Byrne speaks into a 70's era radio microphone while wearing white vintage style headphones.

In Our Time

Gerard Byrne
February 8 & 11–14, 2020
Studio 1—Goodman

Irish artist Gerard Byrne’s video installation In Our Time unfolds, in real time, the inner workings of a recording studio during the golden era of analog radio. 

On first look, the video has the familiar register of a period piece set in a meticulously recreated control-booth of a radio station of its day. However, the linear timeline of the broadcast—with its repetitions of commercial breaks, the lilt and timbre of the radio host’s voice, the classic pop, and the weather segments—slowly disengages and falls apart. Soon, the songs played are not those that have been announced, the station’s name sounds different, the news events skip from decade to decade, and all the while the band simply continues to tune-up. In this radio booth, where the repetition of broadcast rhythms dictates the consecutive daily events, the image and soundtracks appear to remain resolutely synchronous. But the gradual disconnection between what is seen and what is heard produces a surreal uncertainty around the fixity of time within the temporal monotony of the radio station.

In Our Time brings into focus not only the time of broadcast—its rhythms, in-jokes, and pop riffs—but reinforces the temporal reality in which we all exist, on the sublevel of our daily routine to the looping of political and historical cycles. The record might change, but our cultural and technological concept of time remains constant. 

Main Image: Gerard Byrne, In Our Time (2017). Courtesy the artist and Lisson Gallery.

Media

Gerard Byrne, In Our Time (2017).

Program Notes
ONGOING: Film Screening in the Concert Hall

Luanda-Kinshasa by Stan Douglas / 12–6PM

Building Tour

2PM tour with Curators Vic Brooks and Anne Leilehua Lanzilotti
4PM tour with Lead Audio Engineer Todd Vos

Dates + Tickets

Installation
In Our Time
Gerard Byrne
Saturday 8
February 2020
------------ thru ------------
Friday 14
February 2020
FREE

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 11AM–6PM
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 11AM–5PM
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 11AM–9PM
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 11AM–8PM
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 11AM–10PM

As part of
Presented By

EMPAC Spring 2020

Event Type
Artist

Season

Curator
Funding

EMPAC Spring 2020 presentations, residencies, and commissions are made possible by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, with additional support from the National Endowment for the Arts; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts; and Vlaamse Gemeenschap, department of Culture, Youth, and Media.