{"id":481,"date":"2025-03-20T19:30:00","date_gmt":"2025-03-21T03:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shadowkitchen.eleniechung.net\/?p=481"},"modified":"2025-09-05T15:16:26","modified_gmt":"2025-09-05T23:16:26","slug":"the-country-this-shape-is-in","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shadowkitchen.eleniechung.net\/?p=481","title":{"rendered":"The Country this Shape is In"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Country this Shape is In: Works in Analog and (Early) Digital by Rbt. Sps.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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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.\u00a0

In 2005, a 16-year-old (and future Shadow Kitchen programmer), Anderson Matthew, had his first encounter with experimental film through a \u201cfound video\u201d on YouTube. The video, titled\u00a0Double Smoke<\/em>, had recently been uploaded by a mysterious account under the name\u00a0Rbt. Sps.<\/strong>

Inspired by the first generation of video artists, such as Vito Acconci, Sps.\u2019 relationship with the camera was initially solitary, creating artifacts saying “I’m queer. I’m young. I’m alone.”\u00a0Which felt sufficient in his hillbilly hinterland of rural Kentucky & Tennessee.

While in art school (for a BFA in printmaking at Murray State University), Sps.\u2019 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\u00a0Apple Express<\/em>.

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\u00a0Shadow Kitchen<\/strong>\u00a0on\u00a0Thursday, March 20 at 7:30pm<\/strong>\u00a0as we present a program of the experimental video works by visual artist\u00a0Rbt. Sps.<\/strong>

Program:<\/strong>
Apple Express<\/em>\u00a0(2005),\u00a0Double Smoke<\/em>\u00a0(2005),\u00a0Title 57\u00a0<\/em>(2007),\u00a0YOKO MADE ME DO IT\u00a0<\/em>(2008),\u00a0Paducah Son<\/em>\u00a0(2015),\u00a0This New Sitcom<\/em>\u00a0(2010-12) and\u00a0Untitled Church Performance by Andro Dadiani<\/em>\u00a0(2023), a first collaboration with the queer anonymous Georgian artist Andro Dadiani.
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Rbt. Sps.<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0(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\u2019s Leap, and NAD Gallery in NYC, Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and Subsequence Gallery in Tbilisi, Georgia. His collaborative feature film\u00a0Confederitis<\/em>\u00a0was 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<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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