Soda_Jerk.
Sydney-based artists and "video sampling collective" Soda_Jerk have been awarded the third Ian Potter Moving Image Commission (IPMIC).
The $100,000 commission is an initiative of the Ian Potter Cultural Trust and the Australian Centre of the Moving Image (ACMI). It will see Soda_Jerk create a solo exhibition, Terror Nullius, to premiere at ACMI in 2018.
Described as “equal parts Australian Gothic, eco-horror and road movie”, Terror Nullius will look at Australia’s cultural and film legacy in order to examine national mythology and “point towards the unstable entanglement of fiction that underpins this country's vexed sense of self.”
IPMIC Judge and ACMI CEO Katrina Sedgwick praised Soda_Jerk for their innovative work.
“We are thrilled to award Soda_Jerk the third Ian Potter Moving Image Commission. Their work is challenging and cheeky, clever, playful and insightful – and it stood out amongst an incredibly competitive field of applicants,” she said.
“Terror Nullius will confront, poke at and recontextualise the clichés, stereotypes and overwhelming whiteness of our Australian cinema history – and it’s so great that ACMI, as the national museum of film, television, video games and digital art and culture, is hosting its world premiere next year.”
Formed in Sydney in 2002, Soda_Jerk is a two-person art collective who “approach sampling as an alternate form of history making.” Their work has taken the form of video installations, cut-up texts, screensavers and live video essays. Most recently, they collaborated with The Avalanches on The Was, as well as VNS Matrix.
"It's a staggering honour to be selected for the Ian Potter Moving Image Commission, our collective head is spinning. But we are also ready to get to work. To be braver, graver, more ambitious, technically dexterous and politically urgent with this project. It is this commission's incredibly generous gift of time and resources, as well as ACMI's expertise, that will make this possible. We are epically thankful,” said Soda_Jerk.
The artists have have previously held solo exhibitions at Anthology Film Archives in New York, the National Museum for Women in the Arts in Washington DC, and Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. Their installations have been staged at Pioneer Works, New York; Walter Phillips Gallery, Banff and the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane.
During 2017 their work will also show at SPACES, Cleveland; Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh and the Barbican, London.
The two previous Ian Potter commissions were The Calling by Angelica Mesiti and Daniel Crooks’ Phantom Ride.