The background to Between yes and no stop and go comes from two short stories, one by Graham Greene, 'The Destructors' and one by JG Ballard, 'The Overloaded Man'. The ideas contained in both these stories confront dichotomies between creating and destroying, the possibilities/impossibilities of shared experience, and the processes of social detachment that everybody uses in order to live their lives. By using image, sound and text, the video sets up a series of passages which either compose or decompose throughout the duration of the work. The discussion of these ideas is played out through the manipulation of scale and time within print and television news imagery, the construction and deconstruction of music through the process of learning, and the play between truths and falsehoods in the act of storytelling.
Rob Kennedy is an artist based in Glasgow, UK, whose work shifts between sculpture, video and live video manipulation. Recent exhibitions/ screenings include: KEN, Glasgow 2004; Wider than the Sky, London 2004; Art Now, Tate Britain, London 2004; Transmediale Festival, Berlin 2004; Sundowning, music video collaboration with Cathode, Machinista Festival, Glasgow 2004; Electric Earth, British Council International Touring Exhibition, 2003-04; Zenomap, Venice Biennale 2003 and The Listener is the Operator, CD-rom and text work in collaboration with Callum Stirling, commissioned by CCA Glasgow for Glasgow Art Fair 2002.
