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Introduction to Crusade
The Contemporary is pleased to present the solo exhibition Crusade, a new multi-media film installation by London-based artist Keith Piper. As one of the most significant artists of the British Black Arts movement in the United Kingdom during the 1980s (along with Sonia Boyce, Eddie Chambers, Lubaina Himid, and Donald Rodney), Piper is noted for having produced some of the most distinctive and challenging work in the field of new media. Made specifically for the Contemporary, Crusade focuses on St. Louis as the subject of a complex aesthetic and historic investigation. Piper’s work combines the latest developments in high definition technology with the tradition of landscape painting to produce a high-tech journey that begins in 11th century Europe and concludes along the Mississippi River in the present. As in earlier work, Piper’s Crusade suggests alternative ways of looking at (and memorializing) history, relocating the viewer in a jarringly unfamiliar position vis a vis the most familiar of locations. During a brief residence in St. Louis, Piper conducted research at historic institutions to compile historic text and images, as well as contemporary footage of the city filmed with a high definition camera. He weaves these materials together in an interrogation of the city as a metaphor for history. St. Louis offers itself as a fascinating case study for Piper’s brand of investigation. The city is located at the geographic and ideological epicenter of the United States. The country’s cardinal points converge on St. Louis—East and West, North and South—just as some of the nation’s most profound conflicts have played out in the city throughout history, from the imperialist project of Manifest Destiny, to incidents of racism and its erasure, to the savage political debates on contemporary American policy. Historically, St. Louis has also found itself enmeshed in the concept of the “crusade,” and Piper uses a combination of opposing vantage points and time sequences, still and moving images, to examine some key historical moments by way of illustration: the initial injunction of Pope Urban II calling for a Christian crusade against the body and terrain of the Islamic “other”; the response of King Louis IX of France to that injunction; the evocation of the name of that sainted French king by Pierre Laclede for a fledgling settlement along a disputed territorial boundary in North America; Lewis and Clark‘s quest for a long imagined Northwest Passage and the resultant exposure of the continental landmass to the logic and implications of Manifest Destiny; the application of that logic by Chief Justice Taney in the Dred Scott case; and the emergence of the Underground Railroad. Crusade warns of the way in which history repeats itself, both within narrow confines and across immense geographic, cultural, and ethnic divides. Piper’s highly poignant work explores the interplay between the complex histories of territorial contest and intervention, as well as the current landscapes of the American Midwest. Organized in scenic and revealing vistas, Piper’s “painted” digital landscapes combined with high definition film footage looped on sculptural large-scale plasma screens and his use of projection and sound portray westward expansion in a way unlike any seen before.
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About Keith Piper Keith Piper has an extensive international exhibition record, including solo shows at Regina Gouger Miller Gallery, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA (2001); Orchard Gallery, Derry, Ireland (2001); Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Oslo, Norway (2001); The New Museum, New York, NY (1999); Gate Foundation, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (1998); and The Fabric Workshop & Museum, Philadelphia, PA (1997). Piper’s most recent group exhibitions include The Black Atlantic, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, Germany (2004); Terminal Frontiers, Street Level Gallery, Glasgow, Scotland (2004); Stranger Than Fiction, Leeds City Gallery, Leeds, UK (2004); Transferts, Palais des Beaux-Arts de Bruxelles, Belgium (2003); 20th World Wide Video Festival, Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2003); Race in Digital Space, MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge, MA(2001) (and traveled to The Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, NY and Spelman College Museum of Fine Art, Atlanta, GA); Unpacking Europe, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Holland (2001); The Unmapped Body, Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT (1998); 2nd Johannesburg Biennial, Johannesburg, South Africa (1997); Interrogating Identity, Grey Art Gallery and Study Center, New York University, New York, NY (1991) (and traveled to Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN; and Duke University Museum of Art, Durham, NC); and Art History, The Hayward Gallery, London, UK (1987). Piper was Assistant Professor of Art at Carnegie Mellon University from 2000-2003 and currently lives in London where he is a Principal Lecturer in Media Production at the School of Cultural & Innovation Studies at the University of East London. Piper is widely published in books, including Unpacking Europe: Towards a Critical Reading, Rotterdam: Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and Nai Publishers, 2001; Boxer: An Anthology of Writings on Boxing and Visual Culture, London: Institute of International Visual Arts, 1996; Photovideo: Photography in the Age of the Computer, London: Rivers Oram Press, 1991; and Storms of the Heart: An Anthology of Black Arts & Culture, London: Camden Press, 1988. He has contributed essays to Art Journal, Third Text, Afterimage, Art Papers, and Revue Noir, among others. visit Contempoary Art Museum St. Louis and learn more...
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