Jodie Foster is okay to go down the wormhole
My text based work Jodie Foster is okay to go down the wormhole is in the group exhibition Event Horizon at QUAD, Derby from Friday 27 September to Sunday 1 December 2013.
The work is made from the short phrase “I’m ok to go” which is repeated approximately 15 times by the actress Jodie Foster (playing scientist Eleanor Arroway) in Robert Zemeckis’s feature film ‘Contact’ (1997).
At a pivotal point in the film Jodie is found on the cusp of a very flashy CGI sequence that will launch her into the unknown and fling her down a wormhole to eventually arrive at a distant planet called Vega. There she will meet an alien who has considerately taken on the outward appearance of her deceased father (to make it less psychologically overwhelming for her).
The work celebrates Foster’s performance and her absolute desire to inhabit the role of a space scientist – on the cusp of what must be one of the greatest theoretical journeys unknown to humankind – to offer an alternative version of a fictional visualisation of an unknowable event.
Jodie Foster is okay to go down the wormhole is about performance, belief, anticipation, not knowing and Hollywood. It recontextualises a text from a significant and well-known work of popular culture to explore the theme of the Event Horizon exhibition – ‘the great sense of the unknown’.
Event Horizon is part of the Time Travel season at QUAD that also includes the Lindsay Seers show ‘Monocular4’ in the QUAD gallery.
http://www.derbyquad.co.uk/exhibition/event-horizon
http://www.derbyquad.co.uk/exhibition/time-travel-season-launch-and-exhibitions-opening
