The Country this Shape is In: Works in Analog and (Early) Digital by Rbt. Sps.
As YouTube celebrates its 20th anniversary, the idea of a “found video” becomes more and more abstract and curiously difficult to describe to a younger generation.
In 2005, a 16-year-old (and future Shadow Kitchen programmer), Anderson Matthew, had his first encounter with experimental film through a “found video” on YouTube. The video, titled Double Smoke, had recently been uploaded by a mysterious account under the name Rbt. Sps.
Inspired by the first generation of video artists, such as Vito Acconci, Sps.’ relationship with the camera was initially solitary, creating artifacts saying “I’m queer. I’m young. I’m alone.” Which felt sufficient in his hillbilly hinterland of rural Kentucky & Tennessee.
While in art school (for a BFA in printmaking at Murray State University), Sps.’ was introduced to a small group of punk/redneck high school kids from a neighboring county in Tennessee. Having been raised in a strict Southern Baptist household, they were a gateway to experiences with drugs and alcohol that he never previously had. When the 20 year old Rbt. Sps. acquired an RCA CMR300 VHS camcorder, he immediately began recording everything around him, resulting in the raw, short documentary Apple Express.
Sps. subsequent works are each organically playful, uninhibited experiments, traversing unknown territories from teenage debauchery, conspiracy theory culture, and the dying breaths of camcorders under the nose of aspiring quasi-theocratic hegemonies.
Join Shadow Kitchen on Thursday, March 20 at 7:30pm as we present a program of the experimental video works by visual artist Rbt. Sps.
Program:
Apple Express (2005), Double Smoke (2005), Title 57 (2007), YOKO MADE ME DO IT (2008), Paducah Son (2015), This New Sitcom (2010-12) and Untitled Church Performance by Andro Dadiani (2023), a first collaboration with the queer anonymous Georgian artist Andro Dadiani.
Rbt. Sps. (b. 1984, Paducah, Kentucky, USA) is an experimental filmmaker and visual artist who lives and works in NYC. Sps. has shown work at PPOW, King’s Leap, and NAD Gallery in NYC, Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and Subsequence Gallery in Tbilisi, Georgia. His collaborative feature film Confederitis was an official selection at the 2018 Istanbul Experimental Film Festival. He was the recipient of a Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant in 2018 and was bequeathed a Kentucky Colonel in 2020. Instagram
