"If you feel like you've been here so many times before, it's not the door you're using but the way you're walking through it..."

—The Kills, "Heart is a beating drum" (2011)

I've learned one lesson from both my mother and Postmodernism: presentation is everything. However, when it comes to the behemoth concept that is crisis, the most powerful aspect of its (re)presentation is that it's rarely apparent. As with most remaining grand narratives, crisis eludes a true signification. Yet it manages to sink the hook in us every time. Right past our advanced technologies, our progressive policies, our better judgment. Soon crisis exists as a ubiquitous phantom limb: unseen but felt. And, in this way, it becomes reified; a paradigm of 'crisis time' pervades. We are stewing in a global vat of crisis soup.

In the often bubbled Western context, one experiences life in a detached but perpetually unfolding atmosphere of crises, because crisis is now the way in which to experience time itself— naturalized by social contract to be always invisible but somehow palpable. As more 'crisis-time' passes, people begin to project the notion of crisis onto the everyday in lieu of it having a recognizable form. Everything exists in a state of becoming crisis. Its semiotic elusiveness gives wake to a whole host of sociocultural ails we've come too well to know: uncertainty, anxiety, avarice, paranoia, futility, etc. But these This is a reference to the title of a 2013 song by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds in which Cave's lyrics come from various articles he read on the Internet. His use of the words "Higgs boson" refer to the important 2012 confirmation of the existence of the Higgs field, which is populated by never before tested particles that account for the remainder of and validate the Standard Physics Model. In the context of "the blues" the confirmation of the particle's existence is a paradigm shift in science, signaling a future of great change and also great instability. Higgs boson blues are not actually symptomatic of the crisis—they're symptomatic of its terrible obscurity.

In this monthly our contributors are concerned with this dual nature of crisis—the projection that parades around as the original and the mysterious disease that we dismiss as the common cold. As poet laureate and performer Pepper Highway so poignantly states in the transcript of her interview: "Be afraid—there are two of them." Highway introduces us to artist and professional liar Keith Cole, who uses his intimate knowledge of Claire Danes and her baby to illustrate how their continual efforts to relink contemporary art practice to the power of the human imagination has made the patri-architecture very angry. Daddy is mad, and he wants us all to stew in perpetual crisis. However, we see (perhaps ironically) clearer than ever through Highway's recanting that Danes and Cole are provoking this response because they've realized that power lies in their acts of projection and the vicarious nature of (re)presentation within their work. Highway asks us to consider that these moments of 'absent' images are "worthy moments in life dealing with the duality, the crisis Claire Danes feels in [her] life."

But, even if we accept that the paradox of crisis merits engagement, how can we reconcile its contradictory nature? How can the root in the ground grow a flower on my lapel? Do we accept this transubstantiation as a new take on the natural? Or, do we label it as necessarily implausible and move on now that it has been entombed by language?

(Lacan laughs smugly in the background.)

Have we constructed this projecting relationship to crisis because it's something that we, in fact, are meant to do? Or, rather, need to do?

In Katherine Dennis' exclusive interview with the internationally renowned Yvonne de Jopling, the topic of biennials also serves as a kind of vicar or projection for a decidedly crisis-time discussion of celebrity, power and spectacle in the art world. The assertive manner in which de Jopling delivers her responses, stating confidently that most people only want to see the most expensive and inaccessible works of art, is a mode of (re)presenting the exponential abstraction of labour within the art economy as something aphilosophic—simplifying many seemingly complex issues. I'll give it to de Jopling, however, as far as her disinterest in getting too cerebral and keeping the conversation on a material level. Who is still interested, really, in talking about the potential of achieving Marxist utopia within contemporary art anymore? This is, unfortunately, the kind of conversation that never leaves the ivory tower because it quickly spins out into the nebula of the Ideal. What de Jopling's frankness does illustrate is that the sociopolitical climate of biennials and their funders, curators, dealers, administrators, etc. has increasingly become the art of selling business within the business of selling art, and that is certainly a moment of duality worth engaging.

Mark Kasumovic presents a less political crisis, but still one that interrogates the idea of spectacle and its reliance on a gambit of cloak and dagger. In fact, Kasumovic's 'notes' mimic this gambit in the way his casual remarks on digital tourism and 'creating memory' in pixels reveal themselves to be a red herring for revisiting the discourse of the Real in art making. Subsequently, he also raises the issue of the Real's nefarious relationship with the historical development of photography—the proverbial Judith in the demise of Art's illusionistic function. Reflecting on his own recent body of work, in which tourists taking pictures of themselves and loved ones in front of monuments are restored as subjects of the camera, Kasumovic speaks as both the redoubled photographer and the watcher through the media theory looking glass. He captures the complexity of the contemporary photographic moment, and argues that the act of recording place through 1s and 0s is culturally prioritized over the act of 'being there'—his subjects, "preferring the simplicity of their screens" over the visceral qualities of the geographic site. But, as many a media theorist has barked at us over the last sixty years, the screen is perhaps the greatest decepticon of them all. It is way, way, way more than meets the eye. It simultaneously functions as a barrier and a portal: a wormhole—an electric window onto the world and the shiny brick wall of hard science.

Although this month's contributors take very different vantage points on this issue of the duality and (re)presentation of crisis, their endeavours are bound by the acknowledgement that it is only through embracing these dichotomies that we can better understand their roles in contemporary artistic production and society in general. These writers are playing the double agents in this instance because they know that switch-hitters have more fun. They aren't interested in traditional ways of addressing this kind of subject matter. They want to recognize the dualities in language, the powerful and occasionally uncanny potential within, and, of course, the importance of presentation. The fashion in which these articles 'walk' is an unlearning of ways to frame and speak about crisis—like a militant waltz melting into parkour.

(The following is an excerpt from an interview given by the reclusive Pepper Highway on CBC Radio's Q with Jian Gohmeshi. This transcribed conversation appears approximately 1:42 minutes into the in-studio interview held on an undisclosed date in 2013 in CBC Radio's Studio 8. It has not been edited or cleared for grammar, language, facts or content.)

Jian: Pepper, this discussion is really great... and I understand your frustration with Keith Cole and Claire Danes. There is something missing and I can't quite put my finger on it. I wonder if it might work better to have you speaking with someone who is recognized on a global scale? Perhaps Rosalind E. Krauss? This may prove to be the 'go to' interview on the topic of Keith Cole and his work and Claire Danes and her peril. The relationship between Keith Cole and his work and Claire Danes and her peril is not quiet, tender and subtle, but rather quite serious once you remove the frivolity of the colour-world (meaning the feelings, moods and tones of our time). To clarify, the architecture of this relationship is very exterior and complex so it needs to be discussed in a complex manner. I think this because whenever we see you, Pepper, you are dancing or doing a ceremony in public, but you are not a "talker," if you know what I mean. You have a special beauty that is elegant but sometimes, if you don't mind me saying, you don't always take things seriously and we rarely understand your rules. Perhaps if we understood your rules we could imagine everything you say and do is complete and whole in its own right. It would be very easy to arrange this other interview. Better because it is on an international level. I think right now, without some sort of conversational additive from an international personality, this interview, while really great and right-on accurate, seems foreign because we, your listening audience, do not have much experience with Pepper speaking, so it feels too remote.

Pepper Highway: Everything Keith has told me about himself is a lie. A big, fat, hairy, lie. He, as my people have been rumoured to say, 'speaks with a fork'd tongue.' He claims to be living a parallel life with Claire Danes. Cut the alarm! Evacuate! Indeed. Claire Danes is in peril! Keith Cole isn't clairvoyant. He cannot bend forks with his mind, does not care about the teenage runaway at the side of the highway, and he insists that any movie or television show starring Claire Danes is just a spoof of the original James Bond novel Casino Royale.
He is a list maker and secretly has files on people.
He is not interested in the formal. He is very, very, very broad. He will offer to guide you but he will not use a map—never take him up on his offer for a free tour.

Abstract? I call "Bullshit."
Non-formal
Un-coherent
Not-unified
and at a loss for a theme.

His cheap geometrics and notations are like an overheard conversation. One may think that eavesdropping on random conversations is fascinating, but again, I call "bullshit." I thought Occupy Toronto was dull, but eavesdropping…
You wanna talk about crisis in the art world? There is an overheard conversation and a witnessed transaction. You tell me, Jian, if this merits what you would call a 'crisis' in the art world or just a Dane In Peril? Historically speaking, when have the Danes been in peril? Their cultural identity is so uniquely strong. The Danes have never been in peril. But Claire Danes… she has seen some peril and even life or death crisis in her day. Check out Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. Claire Danes plays Katherine Brewster in the film—a veterinarian whose life is about to change forever. Because she is present and alive, civilization will continue because of her mere existence. There is nothing extraordinary about Claire Danes, or Katherine Brewster for that matter. They are both ordinary women in their ordinary-ness. Nothing truly remarkable happens in their life but they do take small events quite seriously and this is how they manage to pull people into the frame of their life. They take revolution, war, baby making, Hollywood red carpet premieres, non-committal beauty, destroying robots from the future with ambivalence partnered with near death experiences and turn them into taut moments of bravery. They return to these moments in life again and again and again. Why? Because they are worthy moments in life dealing with the duality, the crisis Claire Danes feels in life. One half her old herself; the other half her new self. Be afraid—there are two of them.

In January, Claire Danes came into Katharine Mulherin's gallery at 1086 Queen Street West, here in Toronto, and bought something for $1,100.00. She paid cash. She said she was starting up a new home in Toronto and was looking for pieces to fill her new house. She was very stressed. I knew it was Claire Danes because Keith Cole talks about her all the time and rents DVD movies she has been in and he makes me watch them with him. Other visitors in the gallery were clearly whispering to each other and all eyes were on La Danes. "Is it really her?" was the temper of the room. She came back a week later, this time with a baby, and bought something else for roughly the same price. Still stressed. Why? Is her youthful manner maturing? Have her years of teenage solitude been robbed from her? Has she lost something that is both tender and true? Even under stress La Danes still possesses a simple, quiet beauty.

Why am I hanging around Katharine Mulherin's gallery so much, you might ask?
To see all the notable people, of course. Also, I have been choosing my hangouts and hang-ups very carefully lately. La Danes sat in Mulherin's gallery that afternoon for about 30 minutes just staring at one particular painting. Baby on lap. Claire seemed stressed but baby appeared calm.
Claire Danes buying art in T.O. but stressed out. Why? In trouble? In peril?
Crisis.
Baby?
Why is Claire so stressed out? Why is she in crisis? What about the baby?

Jian: This conversation is certainly not what I expected. Not, shall I say, 'the norm.' Leaving aside his art for now is Keith Cole interested in ritual, intimacy, community or… what can we expect from Keith Cole—the person? He seems to celebrate yet criticize notions of intimacy, ritual and especially community. Is he seeking to transform these grand ideas or simply interject a lifetime of experience into what our expectations are?

Pepper Highway: Yes, yes, yes. Expectations. We expect something from Keith Cole. It is like sweat pants versus jeans. Once we go into a dance studio we take off our jeans and put on sweat pants. Why? Because we have expectations. We are in a dance studio so we expect to move in some way. People come to things with a series of expectations. Break the cycle of normalcy. Stop being clear. Why is clarity considered good? Who decides what is clear and what is not? Why do we praise people who "speak with such clarity?"

What is clear to you is not necessarily clear to me. Who cares if Keith Cole doesn't measure up? He just doesn't measure up—simple. He has a different value, a different economy. He enters the room and the energy changes. There is always something up with him.

Apparently, it is about the process and trying to live without restraint. Improvising at every turn. Ripping off and riffing off. Being open to anything. He turns away from turf and territory. Who owns what? He is not into protectionism. If you tow the party line you become monotonous and then really, really, really bad work is produced.
Unhinged.
Mismatched.
Disconnected.
Something is up. Claire Danes is in peril! Cut the alarm! Evacuate!
Keep Claire Danes free and clear. She is the generator of new ideas. She helps Keith Cole with the transformation of ideas. He has books. He reads books. He has access to material online. He goes outside. He lives off line. He has what he calls a "so-called life." But where is the proof of this so-called transformation of ideas? I am perhaps only offering an analysis, and my analysis tells me why it happened but proof shows me at the very least that something did happen, or is about to happen. No need to explain. Just show me. I don't want to know your sources. Claire Danes and her peril offered Keith Cole one thing—a motivated plan B. The many television appearances and films featuring La Danes did not transform Keith Cole into a long suffering teenage girl, a lonely shop girl, a petulant guest star, an animal loving mutant fighter, a girl's best friend, a dress size of 2 or even into a government agent fighting terrorism on home soil. However, she did teach and give Keith Cole the tools to accomplish such acts and get away with it successfully—except for the size 2 dress. These were the ordinary devices society never offered him while he was hanging out for all those years in the back stairwells of life. Thank you Claire. Thank you.

Daddy is mad, full frontal and looking right at you. The peril that Claire Danes is experiencing will not be leaving anytime soon. You have been captured by her crisis and her singular force field of intelligence. La Danes never uses intimidation or oppression, just beauty and brainpower to shift the hegemony of the art world away from money and social capital. Claire Danes and Keith Cole hunt and gather—bringing back the power of the human imagination. Look at these two looking at you. Be afraid—there are two of them. Silently judging.

Keith Cole, you are right. Daddy is mad. Daddy is the contemporary art world. You and Claire Danes and everyone else who believe that art is about pushing the boundaries of the human imagination have angered him. Art is about power, money and social position.
He is mad. Daddy is banging on our collective bedroom door and this time he is serious.
He wants in. Cut the alarm! Evacuate! Claire Danes is in peril!

Jian: Thanks to my guest today: Pepper Highway.

Yvonne de Jopling, owner of Black Sphere Gallery in London, UK, is a famous gallerist and collector. Inspired by the whirlwind of biennales taking place all around her this brazen visionary has thrown caution and tradition to the wind, and hosted her very own Biennale in Toronto, Canada of all places—the First Yvonne de Jopling Biennale of Contemporary Art.

This June I had the unique opportunity to experience the festival's week-long vernissage, attending a mammoth number of exclusive openings, screenings and secret events. Catching de Jopling in a rare down moment between functions, I was able to ask her about her spectacular Biennale and her perspectives on the condition of contemporary art in Canada. Here is a selection of my conversation with this fast-talking, jet-setting powerhouse.

…

KD: The first Yvonne de Jopling Biennale of Contemporary Art (FYdeJBCA) places Canada—for the first time—on the international playing field of major art festivals. Why choose Toronto to host this exhibition?

Toronto is ideally located to be part of the summer circuit of the most important art festivals in the world—Venice, Art Basel, Istanbul, Frieze New York and now the First Yvonne de Jopling Biennale of Contemporary Art. Toronto needed to get on this circuit, and I put it there.

Of course, one can't forget the greater summer/autumn circuit: Prague, the Biennial of the Americas in Denver, Momentum and Bergen in Norway, Shenzhen, Turku, U3 in Ljubljana, the Ruhrtriennale, the Bienal do Mercosul I Porto Alegre, Lyon, the Drawing Biennial in London, Alberta, Shanghai, Sharjah, Guanlan, Montevideo in Uruguay, the Asia-Pacific Triennial in Brisbane, Kochi-Muziris, the Biennial of the South in Panama, Auckland, the Triennial of Small-scale Sculpture in Fellbach, Cerveira, Aichi in Nagoya, Curitiba, Thessaloniki, Moscow, Christchurch, Kobe, Montreal, Singapore...

KD: You've recited an impressive list of major art events that demonstrates a clear demand for and fascination with biennials across the globe. Many of these more traditional biennales often invite a chief curator to lead the project and many employ other curators to create smaller pavilions, exhibitions or projects. For example, this year in Venice curator Massimiliano Gioni chose the title The Encyclopedic Palace to guide curators of National pavilions with a theme of an imaginary museum, home to a world of treasures.

Yet, you have single-handedly selected a roster of internationally acclaimed artists for your biennial with no evident theme to lead this large-scale project. What insight can you offer about this extensive undertaking and your curatorial vision?

Let's not get all cerebral here. Unlike Mr Gioni, I don't believe in peripheries or democratic experiences. I also don't believe in showing unknowns. Why preemptively frame an exhibition as imperfect, as unachievable? Who wants to see that? Let's face it—most people (i.e. my audience) want to see the most expensive, the most glamorous, the most inaccessible and spectacular works of art. They want celebrity and wealth. This is what the First Yvonne de Jopling Biennale of Contemporary Art delivers. If it's not worth something, what's the point of looking at it? Toronto wants glamour, exclusivity, the kind of power in art that is par for the course in London, New York, Venice, Paris… And I'm here to give it to them.

Art festivals have never been about just art. They've been about nationalism and politics and power. Now, let's face it, they're about conspicuous consumption. The FYdeJBCA reflects that.

As for the theme, I am the theme. I mean, if I'm the one bringing these artists to Toronto, putting Toronto on the map, then why shouldn't the event be named after me? Doesn't that make sense?

KD: By choosing yourself as the theme you have pioneered a new form of biennale, one named not for a city or major institution but for an individual. What sparked your decision to bear any successes or failures of such an immense undertaking as one woman rather than finding an institution or city to shoulder some of the responsibility?

I think it's about time that this whole biennale and art fair thing branches out. Why should they be named after cities exclusively? Or countries or major museums? Didn't Canada need to hold a bake sale to pay for its participation in Venice this year? Name it after whoever paid for the gig! Name it after the artist, the curator, the telecom company that footed the bill. Without the money, there is no art. So name the event after the money or after the person who found the money, not the geography, the location.

KD: Speaking of money, your art-world exclusive opening week has been all about glamour, excess and extravagance. However, the opening week of the inaugural FYdeJBCA Biennial coincided with the opening of the 55th Venice Biennial. After such a major investment any concern that, given distance and therefore a need to choose between these two events, the art community would opt for the tried-and-true rather than a newcomer exhibition on the scene?

The geography of the Documenta-Köln-Venice trek is so 2009. I think the art jetsetters will be thrilled to clock some extra frequent flyer miles to see the FYdeJBCA.

KD: Your instincts seemed to be right on point. Indeed, people have come from around the world to take part. In fact, the Biennial garnered acclaim from international press, even before the public opening. In contrast, there has been relatively little response from Canadian critics and art publications. What does this tell you about the state of contemporary art in Canada?

What Canadian publications? I checked my Vitamin P book and there were no Canadian artists listed, so I didn't think to check for critics or publications.

KD: You've been quoted in the press as saying: "A city is not a city unless it has a Biennale." How do you see the role of Biennales within a local art scene and international reputation of a city?

Just that—you can't possibly have great artists if you're not showing them off in a great big art fair and you're calling that art fair a biennale or a triennale (and let's face it, that last one doesn't count—it's practically admitting that you don't have the money or the wherewithal to pull off a biennale). A biennale is a commodity.

A city just isn't a real, honest, cosmopolitan city unless it has a biennale. Look at Christchurch. Look at Fellbach. They've really hit the big time since adding a biennale to their calendar. They're part of the international scene now. The FYdeJBCA will be a spectacle to end all spectacles. It will really put Toronto on the map. And because, obviously, the worth of a biennale is measured by the thickness of its catalogue, ours is the thickest!

KD: Can you speak about the artists you've showcased in the exhibition and catalogue?

Among the artworks that have never been seen before in Toronto will be: Damien Hirst's sharks, Jeff Koons's poodles, Tracy Emin's bed, David Choe's recreation of his Facebook mural, Nan Goldin's naked French people, Wolfgang Tillmans's naked German people, Walid Raad's photographs of traumatized people, Takashi Murakami's creature with giant lactating breasts, Gillian Wearing's masks, one long take from Tacita Dean's film, FILM, alongside Olafur Eliasson's The Weather Project. Sophie Calle, in disguise, will follow people around, photographing them, and, upon being discovered, will ask her friends to interpret the reactions. Matthew Barney's Björk, Andreas Gursky's $4.3 million photograph (I can't really recall the name…), Urs Fischer's giant sculptures of cigarette packs and teddy bears, Richard Prince's nurse, Paul McCarthy's pigs, Ryan McGuiness's BFFs on roller-skates. Zeng Fanzhi, China's Number 1 Artist, will be showing his mask series. Maurizio Cattelan's headless horse, Elmgreen and Dragset's drowned man, James Franco's… actually, I can't keep track of which piece he's showing; it changes every week. JR's TED talk, Sheppard Fairy's portrait of Barack Obama, and Jake and Dinos Chapman's Fucking Hell (not to be confused with Hell).

KD: An impressive list, to say the least. To end us off I'd love if you could take a moment to postulate on the future of this event as a reoccurring international art exhibition?

No thanks, I'm off to Zagreb in a few minutes. Huge art scene happening there! Ever heard of Saša Šekoranja?

The First Yvonne de Jopling Biennale of Contemporary Art runs until November 17th, 2013 in Toronto, Canada. See www.yvonnedejopling.org for information about artists, hours and exhibit locations.

Prior to the digital revolution we had things—for better or worse—that we could identify as real. The Eiffel Tower was a place, and the photograph of it came from a negative that was as real as the cobblestones the photographer walked along to reach it. A digital image, however, consists of a much more abstract construction, and while it still requires a physical lens to concentrate its image over a digital sensor, the result remains at best a mathematical conglomeration of 1s and 0s that nothing less than a computer could intelligibly interpret. It is a coded message that simultaneously seems more complex and more akin to the reality it attempts to represent.

 

Mark Kasumovic, Camera Portrait #11, 2013

Tourism offers a uniquely ideal backdrop to explore the cultural transition of the photograph as it fades into digital obscurity. It is here that we most desperately try to record our experience and relentlessly point our cameras. Here, in the most pictorially reproduced places in the world, we choose to take the most pictures. From Instagram posts to Tumblr blogs, a vacation's worth of images clogging our hard drives, cell phone cameras and GoPro helmet cams, the sheer amount of data we create provokes a re-consideration of these recordings' purpose. Where once a few rolls of film would have sufficiently described the world around us, now returning from a trip with thirty-six or so images would be considered idiotic. We choose to create digital memories, and lots of them, so that others may enjoy our experiences for us.

A single photograph from this body of work speaks most eloquently about these issues. In Camera Portrait #9 a woman stands with her right hand covering her eyes and her left clenching a digital camera. It resembles a staged photograph as much as a documentary image. It was taken in the exact place where millions of photographs have been taken before. It says more about photography than I ever could, yet rightfully raises more questions than it answers. It brims with the contradictions we find ourselves trapped within today. It offers an ode to the digital photographer—every one of us—as we collectively stare into our screens, creating a world we wish was as simple and perfect as it appears on the back of our digital camera.

 

Mark Kasumovic, Camera Portrait #9, 2013

Perhaps the sound of a digital camera re-enacting the physical shutter's click offers the greatest metaphor for the transition from analogue to digital media. Like the photograph, the comforting sound of the metallic clink, signifying that a picture has been taken, too has been digitized. There are lots of metallic clinks at tourist spaces. Too many, one could argue, for our own good. The authoritative, singular photograph that was once associated with analogue photography is rapidly reaching its end and digital technology is providing a new role for the photograph—one that sees it as a small part of a complex, connected and networked system. As I photographed near the world's most photographed places I realised that the photographers themselves were often the most intriguing elements of these historic landscapes. They glared into the backs of their cameras, and I imagined them being bathed by the light of their glowing screens, preferring the simplicity of their compositions to the spectacle of the tourist site.

The shift of the photograph from its physical form into digital data points to lost referents and a loss of the symbiotic relationship it shared with the material world. But it also points to a new way of seeing the world. The practical limits of analogue photography were once a burden to the casual photographer and tourists, who would limit their precious film consumption, as it was expensive and a pain to deal with. One photograph of the Colosseum was enough to express our desire to share what we've witnessed. Today we take more because we can, and the slightest variants between our photographs surely represent more time considering how we photograph as opposed to what we photograph. Whereas a photograph was once a means of sharing experiences, we now obsess over the act of photographing. In theory, our photographs share what we are doing on vacation, but what are we showing when all we are doing is taking pictures?

 

Mark Kasumovic, Camera Portrait #3, 2013

In 2005 artist Robert Burley began documenting the death of traditional photography. Titled "Disappearance of Darkness," the project led Burley across Canada, Europe and the United States in search of the signs of this demise, usually in the form of facility closures. Factories that had been in operation since the beginnings of the production of film were closing at an alarming rate. Photographic film was becoming redundant, its function usurped by the efficiency and popularity of the digital sensor. Burley describes his work: "[T]he act of dissolving blocks of silver into ditric acid, mixing it with the tissue of animals and coating it onto film and paper—all so the world could partake in one of the world's most fascinating and important inventions—was coming to a rapid halt." Burley, Robert, "Disappearance of Darkness Book Preview," 2012, Web Video. http://www.robertburley.com/index.php/site
/gallery/disappearance_of_darkness_2010/ [1]

Photographic film as we know it has been around for over one hundred and fifty years, but its near disappearance has only taken a fraction of this time. Burley's fascination with this demise was spurred by reflecting on his reliance on these traditional materials over his entire photographic career, and the inevitable questions about what would happen next. Within his body of work we find images of demolition, abandoned buildings and stripped interiors. Implosions of Buildings 65 and 69, Kodak Park, Rochester, New York [#2], 2007, however, remains perhaps the most iconic of them all. Burley directed his camera at the media cameras as they attempted to capture the moments during and after the demolition of a historic Kodak building. The photograph is lit by an eerie glow, as the dust and debris seem to have made taking any kind of photograph of the building's implosion impossible.

In its final moments the Kodak building escaped any form of representation, its debris instead creating a great, blinding veil that raised the question: with the death of analogue photography, what will happen next?