Catalogue > Un extrait vidéo au hasard

In this film Imogen Stidworthy interweaves standard and subverted English (backslang) with tropes of class and race, trade and desire in the hidden backwaters and idealised forms of the voice. Backslang developed as a linguistic disguise to protect speakers, especially from the ears of the law. Liverpool slang has absorbed fragments from the language streams of global trade, passing through the docks: Spanish, Dutch, Yiddish, Chinese and African languages. Like all languages Backslang is also a space of identification, spoken proudly. It could be seen as a sign of economic and social conditions and as a form of resistance ? a necessity, or a possibility for different social paradigms. In Barrabackslarrabang, the voice criss-crosses social borders to reflect the mirroring of structures and desires through ostensibly opposing spaces of language, legality and culture. The work continues Stidworthy?s ongoing concern with the social landscape of the voice, its space and borders.

Imogen Stidworthy is a British multimedia artist based in Liverpool. She has exhibited at documenta 12 and most recently her work has been shown at the Thessaloniki Biennale (2007), Shanghai Biennale (2006), ?Be What You Want but Stay Where You Are? at Witte de With, Rotterdam (2005) and ?Governmentality? at Miami Art Central (2004). Recent solo shows include ?Get Here? at Galerie Hohenlohe, Vienna (2006), ?Dummy? at FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon (2005) and ?Audio Cab?, a temporary public art work installed in taxi cabs in Luton (2005). In 2004, Stidworthy was shortlisted for the Beck's Futures prize, for a video work featuring Cilla Black impersonators. In 1996 she won the Dutch Prix de Rome.[citation needed] Stidworthy is a tutor at Piet Zwart Institute, Rotterdam and an Advising Researcher at the Jan van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht. In 2008 she won the Liverpool Art Prize.