The NewBridge Project present: The Ten Commandments – Kelvin Brown & Jacob Robinson

The NewBridge Project present:
The Ten Commandments
Kelvin Brown & Jacob Robinson

Talk: Thursday 30 June, 4-5:30pm
Preview: Thursday 30 June, 6-9pm
Open: 12-6pm Friday 1 – Sunday 3 July 2016 

The Ten Commandments, is a moving image commission by Kelvin Brown & Jacob Robinson touring to The Crypt Gallery, London this June. The Ten Commandments takes the form of a multiple-screen installation, commissioned by The NewBridge Project as part of Reconfiguring Ruins; an AHRC-funded research project that interrogates the relationship between arts, heritage and urban regeneration by looking at ruins as processes, materialities and mediations.

About The Ten Commandments:

Kelvin Brown and Jacob Robinson set out on a journey to find the ruined remains of the set for Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 film The Ten Commandments, this replica of ancient Egypt has laid buried in the sands of the Guadalupe Dunes on the Coast of California since the film finished shooting in the twenties.

Instead they found “at the counter of a Mexican diner two elderly men, they told stories of the demise of Guadalupe from a thriving Wild West community to a town where half the shops on Main Street lie empty, and of the internment of Guadalupe’s Japanese community during the Second World War.”

In Kelvin and Jacob’s new multiple-screen installation, the ruins of Hollywood history become a lens with which to view the ruination of a once vibrant community, and as a way examine the impact of the thousands of vehicles that now drive across the dunes and beaches which once served as locations for DeMille. The film set, which lay buried in the sands for decades, and which had now been the subject of several archeological digs became the mechanism for a metaphorical excavation of the towns troubled history.

The introductory sequences from the original black and white version of the Ten Commandments acted as a template for their cinematic approach. In returning to the original locations used in the film they echoed its visual language; Hence the Egyptian chariots were recast as the pick-up trucks that now thunder across the dunes, and DeMille’s approach in filming the exodus of the Jews was applied to the movements of modern day people within the same cinematic landscape.

This Old Testament story, told repeatedly by DeMille, and endlessly through history, and occurring as it does in the scriptures of three of the worlds major religions, here became a way of examining far more personal ideas of faith and religion. Kelvin and Jacob said “Ultimately this process of construction, representation, myth making and final ruination, with its associated tension between the simulated and the real, allowed questions to be asked as to the notion of authenticity. These literal and metaphorical ruins raise questions as to the potential future of American society, a country who’s ideals and aspirations have been so successfully propagated throughout Hollywood history.

http://reconfigruins.com

http://reconfiguringruins.blogs.sas.ac.uk

The NewBridge Project:
The NewBridge Project is an artist-led community comprising of over 80 artist studios, an exhibition space, a bookshop and a social hub based in a 29,000sqft former office block in Newcastle-upon-Tyne city centre. The NewBridge Project supports artists to investigate and challenge the boundaries of contemporary art practice.

The NewBridge Project delivers a programme of exhibitions, screenings and live events, supported by responsive talks, publications and broadcasts taking place throughout their artist studios, gallery space, bookshop and locations off-site.
For over 5 years The NewBridge Project has provided exchange and support in an engaged and discursive community of artists. The shared workspace is a critical and collaborative environment that allows artists to discuss and develop new ideas and projects.

http://thenewbridgeproject.com

The Ten Commandments was commission by The NewBridge Project and supported by an AHRC ‘Care for the Future’ Development Award & Arts Council England.

The presentation at The Crypt Gallery, London is supported by the OpenSpace Research Centre through The Open University.