‘Often Return’

Installation
2019

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‘Often Return’ is an installation commissioned by The Royal Academy of Arts to take place in the ‘Julia and Hans Rausing Hall’. The space links the historic Burlington House to their new development, connecting collections which date back to 200AD with contemporary exhibits. Understanding the hallway itself as a kind of time bridge informed the concepts of transit spaces, lobby music and cultural artefacts.

Having excavated libraries of audio & visual fragments from a range of historic worlds, the installation staged a mass collision of these cultural samples inside the corridor. Mixed by footfall, the samples were triggered by the movement of the crowd passing through the space. Sounds from a Polish town square echo out alongside a pattern lifted from a hotel lobby carpet in 1950’s midwest America.