Rakish Light finished the first iteration of OO Guide to Sobriety in early 2020; two years later we revisited the original sites, adapting the same dual-lens camera to capture video of the double image projected inside the box. The now-moving images were surreal, eerie in a post-pandemic way; we paired the video with a soundtrack of singing bowls and voices recorded in an abandoned California train tunnel and showed it alongside the first iteration.
Video: Which recounts what will be seen by whoever reads it, or heard by whoever listens to it being read (digital video, 120 min). Shown at The Suburban, 2022.
The first iteration of OO Guide to Sobriety was finished in early 2020 with plans for an exhibition that May. By mid-March the world had changed (this is when Other Spaces began) as we, the lucky ones, and much of the planet felt our lives reduced to the boxes in which we lived, and the video feeds through which we communicated. This second iteration of OO emerged in late 2021 after wide-spread vaccination, during a break between variants, as home testing kits became available and the world, roads, and parks had begun to reopen.
The images, now moving, were surreal in the eerie way much of the immediate post-pandemic felt—(post-)apocalyptic yet distant. We paired this video with a soundtrack of singing bowls and voices recorded in an abandoned train tunnel.
