Digest is a multi-channel video installation consisting of 1001 videotapes that are permanently sealed in polypropylene video sleeves. The analogue contents carried on each buried videotape remain unrevealed. The series of painted tapes is arranged on shallow wooden racks that evoke the display aesthetics of video rental stores, commemorating a mode of image consumption that has since slipped into obsolescence. Each painted tape in the Digest Archive features a single verb drawn from the title of a film that was in circulation during the era of homevideo. Collectively, the verbs describe an embodied subjectivity that has come under increasing threat in the digital era.
First debuted on the Sharjah Biennial 14 (in early 2019), Digest is an accumulating archive that Breitz will continue to grow. In Basel, a unique grid of 25 new Digest paintings is presented for the first time. Like other grids drawn from the Digest Archive, the work proposes an open-ended narrative via the selection and juxtaposition of particular verbs. In this instance, the selected verbs evoke political struggle, the ongoing dialogue between structures of authority and those seeking justice within such structures: To control, to rule, to command, to silence, to boycott, to strike, to riot, to resist, to rebel, to act…
