Ruth Angel Edwards will present a newly commissioned live audio visual performance on the opening night.
For this year’s 3hd she looks at contemporary manifestations of counter cultural aesthetics; how successive generations have rediscovered, recycled and reinvented politically confrontational ideas and aesthetics from the past through appropriation, referencing and emulation. She also examines new modes of radical expression made possible through digital technology and the communications revolution.
Focusing in on a current phenomenon she describes as ‘pop anarchism’, she examines new manifestations of punk sensibilities; nihilism, anti authoritarian and anti consumerist sentiment as they appear in some of the coded, covert new subcultures emerging today. At the other end of the scale, she looks at the co-option of current political movements and associated aesthetic language in the work of billion dollar mainstream acts such as Rhianna.
Ruth Angel Edwards works across a wide variety of mediums, with a particular focus on sound, music and video installation. Her work explores the communication of ideology through pop culture, and in particular within youth music subcultures. Historicising these movements and tracing their trajectories, she examines subcultures and the wider socio-economic environments which give rise to them, as well as their complex symbiotic relationship with the mainstream. Feminism, gender, collectivity, and commodification are recurring themes in her work as she moves between time frames and spaces with a playful, exploratory approach, creating communicative and insightful immersive works.
In addition to the performance, a permanent installation will be on display in the space for the duration of the festival.