29th May – 22nd June 2013 Seventeen 17 Kingsland Road, London, E2 8AA www.seventeengallery.com Private View Friday 7th June 2013
In A Man Digging, Jon Rafman engages with the emotional and perceptual experience of a present-day explorer as he navigates virtual worlds. The contingency of experience and the intrinsic mutability of memory are foregrounded in the exhibition as Rafman explores the chasm between our online and offline life. Incorporating both anachronistic and cutting-edge technologies, commissions from deviantart.com, and footage from video games, A Man Digging shows how virtual worlds have dislocated the archive from its traditional moorings and have given rise to new forms of desire, anxiety, and nostalgia. While examining the foundational human experience of loss, Rafman points toward the potential of the virtual archive to unveil and reveal alternative ways of constructing and preserving our collective and personal histories.
