thickear Records Store

Geoff Howse, Jack James, Kevin Logan and Tadeo Sendon

28 August – 25 September

For their residency at arebyte during August/September 2015 artists’ collective thickear are configuring the gallery as a multi-function space for research and public interaction for their new performance-installation piece thickear Records Store (TRS).

thickear Records Store offers visitors the chance to take away limited edition thickear cassette tapes with personalised sleeves in exchange for personal information. The sleeves and the contents of the tapes themselves are assembled from the participant’s answers during a one-on-one consultation with one of the four members of thickear. A second copy of the data collected is kept and placed in record racks for visitors to dig through.

As with previous thickear projects, thickear Records Store features participation as a crucial aspect of the work, centred on creating moments of exchange between audience and artist as part of a shared act that relates to everyday transactions in personal information on social media platforms, civil bureaucracy and contemporary consumerism.

The collective are also conducting a pop-up version of thickear Records Store at surprise locations during the residency, the dates and venues for which will be revealed on a week by week basis during TRS’s tenure. During these excursions the gallery space will take on an archival format and feature an additional video work

thickear Records Store continues thickear’s series of works interrogating contemporary themes of public transaction through participation, performance, installation and sound. These include Ministry of Measurement (2013), a two week performance/installation within the Barbican Centre where members of the public were asked by bureaucratic staff to measure subjective distances before submitting their data back to “The Ministry" and Pink Sheet Method (2014) which sought to investigate economies of data exchange and consider how transaction is employed to create perceived but oblique value.

Formed in London at the beginning of 2012, artists’ collective thickear have presented at Royal College of Art, V&A, Barbican, FutureEverything Festival, Open Data Institute, Lighthouse, Goldsmiths University, Microsoft NERD Centre - Boston, Music Tech Fest and Yard Theatre.