concrete radio

Mark Essen
Concrete Radio (2011)
concrete sculpture and HD video, colour, sound

'Using George Berkeley's metaphysical theory of subjective idealism as a starting point, Mark Essen has developed a film work that encompasses his sculpture Concrete Radio. Filmed around the Wysing arts centre, Cambridgeshire, Archangel George presents the traces of human disruption in an abandoned and deserted landscape. The film adheres to Berkeley's theory of metaphysical perceptions of the mind; that the existence of ideas depends solely on their being perceived, and following thus, that ideas exist solely because of the mind. Essen's film posits that to exist is to perceive, or be perceivable and that it is the human presence that informs us of an action or consequence. Essen's sculpture will accompany the film in which it features'

I came across this piece at an exhibition called Crash at VIVID, Birmingham. For me, paramount to the idea of metaphysics and the weight of human presence and perception, is the fact that the radio itself reads as an obsolete relic, with the concrete representative of uninhabited space and emptiness.