Baby-G, 2023

Baby-G

4K video with stereo sound, 10" 16", acoustic panels, wooden "grid"

Inhabiting the space between audio-essay and music-video, Baby-G explores the figurative and spatial models of time embodied within the ‘Baby-G’ (G-SHOCK) watch. Brought to market in 1994, the ‘Baby-G’ was the first digital watch advertised to teenagers to include a quartz-controlled digital mechanism and world-time function, synchronising its user to a globally expanding, linear, capitalist “grid”. The ‘Baby-G’ was equipped with the same “shock-resistant structure” as the all-terrain G-Shock watch, but with “feminine-friendly” appeal. A watch designed for a future where flexibility and preparedness would become crucial personal attributes. Written by Nicolas Helm-Grovas, the work’s central text is voiced by Ash Reid and Judith von Orelli with improvised musical collage by Anneke Kampman. Against this, video footage of Kampman’s friend, Valentina Fernandez Rodan exploring a local park is cut; video material sped up, slowed down, and stretched out in co-ordination with the layered structure of the soundtrack. The montage of pans, arcs and rotations which make up Baby-G’s audio-visual portrait recalling the dynamic structures of music itself.

Presented as part of An Endless Archive, San Mei Gallery, London.

[28 April – 10 June 2023]