Sleep Mode Broadcast

What are we really paying attention to when we are on-screen? The backgrounds in the homes of your co-workers? Whether your friend has put lipstick on before logging in? Who hasn’t turned their camera off before yawning? Maybe there is unexpected poetry to be found in the endless scroll of information appearing on screen. In times of social distancing perhaps the sound of a voice from afar can be as evocative as getting a letter in the post.

The artists whose works feature in Sleep Mode were all part of our recent exhibition 24/7 and this broadcast screens those works as well as new iterations of their projects: Douglas Coupland’s Slogans for the 21st Century series, now given new meaning in a global pandemic; new paintings from Michael Mandiberg of backgrounds seen during Zoom meetings; and Addie Wagenknecht’s cybersecurity films masked as beauty tutorials, including a new film commissioned since lockdown.

Cut together in a frenetic manner, this intense online programme of, at times, mundane short works aims to mimic the feeling of your attention being pulled by the important and the banal in equal measure. The screening is crafted to remind you that properly turning off, and sleeping, might in fact be the best form of resistance we have to living our lives in sleep mode.

Tune in here