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Adventures close to home

The essay ‘Adventures close to home’ was published in the catalogue to accompany the internationally touring exhibition ‘Elixir: The Video Organism of Pipilotti Rist’ at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam and the Kiasma Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, both in 2009. Consciously deviating from the tone and domain of the standard catalogue essay, Slyce’s text offered a complementary and parallel perspective to the show, providing a framework of ideas with which to structure one’s experience of the exhibition.

Slyce tested the conventions of the catalogue essay. The writing was based on 36 hours of interviews with Pipilotti Rist conducted in New York, London and Zurich. This extended conversation shaped the perspective and position of the text, linking closely to the conception and making of Rist’s work. Slyce’s interviewing method is centred on exploring the specific characteristics of an artist’s practice, i.e. how an artist might think, speak, read, write and conceive of their wider activities as resources for the making of their ‘art’. Slyce juxtaposes this approach to practice with one that would focus more narrowly on the set of art objects produced by an artist. His interviews with artists are typically conducted as dialogues that draw on critical analysis, intuitive apprehension and appreciations of what constitutes their practice. These are continually tested throughout the extended conversation.

The catalogue was launched at the opening of the exhibition at the Museum Boijmans (2009). Slyce has given lectures about his methodology at the Christie’s Education MA in Modern and Contemporary Art and Art World Practices programme since 2009.