RICHARD
GRAYSON
Nothing
Can Stop Us Now
5 screen high definition video installation - 2014
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Nothing Can Stop Us Now features the song 'Stalin wasn't Stallin' memorably covered by Robert Wyatt on his 1982 album 'Nothing Can Stop Us', a record that has become an exemplar of a strand of politically engaged independent music which now seems to represent a model of engaged practice that is increasingly distant and impossible. 'Stalin
wasn't Stallin' was written by Willie Johnson, originally
recorded by the gospel a capella group The Golden Gate
Jubilee Quartet in 1943 to celebrate Stalin's stand against
Adolf Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union.
The work shows individuals walking through parks and streets past glimpses of financial and political landmarks of contemporary London. Each person sings fragments of sound that over time combine into a complex and rousing harmony. Nothing Can Stop Us Now talks of ghosts of solidarity and aspirations of agency that still underpin ideas and mythologies of contemporary art. It generates a virtual gathering that both articulates and layers occluded models of political understandings of the world. Choral expressions of a song from a past political model of the world contrast against the buildings and developments that constitute the socio-cultural infrastructure of London, global capital and the international rich.
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A song of collective political identification and associated utopian desires collides with the contemporary idea of the flash mob, seeking to explore ways that opposition to dominant beliefs have and continue to be expressed - through gatherings and group action - but are now mediated and expressed through electronic and digital media. Music by Leo Chadburn, based on 'Stalin Wasn't Stallin' (Willie Johnson, 1943). The singers for Nothing Can Stop Us Now are: Bishi Bhattacharya, Leo Chadburn, Tom Herbert, Laura Moody and Sophie Ramsay. |
