In a new piece for Matt’s Gallery Emma Hart calls on the potential for a camera to precipitate an event, and not simply record it. Developing previous live works into a sculptural video installation that performs itself, Hart requests the audience to do likewise: to step up, instead of hanging back in contemplation.

Fed up of producing her own works herself, Hart has made a group of assistants to help with the arduous tasks of fabrication and documentation. In a devised play of sorts, with stage directions and chorus but maybe no dialogue, the digital protagonists interact within the scenography of the everyday to a script of activating chatter. Language gets things done, as it does in the real world, but here the net output is a command of commanding, the critical exercising of power for power’s sake.

This was Emma Hart’s first exhibition at Matt’s Gallery. A publication accompanying the exhibition co-published with The Centre for Useless Splendour at University Kingston London with text by Sally O’Reilly was free to all gallery visitors.

The exhibition toured to Outpost Gallery Norwich 1–21 May 2012 and CIRCA Contemporary Art Projects in Newcastle upon Tyne, September 2012.