Cally Spooner

Fifty Billion Hectares of Time is Cally Spooner’s third solo exhibition with GB Agency. Effectively an anatomy study for the 21st century, the show examines a technical and temporal performance climate, in which it is increasingly difficult to tell the difference between what is alive, and what is dead.

At the center of Fifty Billion Hectares of Time is a film. Shot in a single ‘hot take’ it captures a choreography for a dancer and a cinematographer, oscillating in a spectrum of heightened activity and waiting. A violent beep, marking the passing of time, replaces the sound of their breathless and exerted bodies. Disjointed from its image, filling the galleries, is an unmanned audio recording taken from a radio microphone worn by the dancer. Captured sonic detritus from New York City’s airwaves, and interference from radio waves surrounding the location of the shoot, shape and carve out an acoustic imprint of the dancer and cinematographer’s bodies. On plinths, fresh pears are endlessly averting their own mortality and decay. Meticulously arranged, rearranged then replenished, they never fall apart. A score, instructions on how to dance a still life on a single breath, is presented in plastic sleeves, mounted to the walls. Elsewhere another pear, this one painted, is fainted.