Surplus Surplus | Seth Ferris

Residency
Written By Elsewhere Living Museum & Artist Residency

Surplus Surplus, Seth Ferris (San Diego, CA)

October 2016. Video, installation. Army surplus collection.

Surplus Surplus rearranges the army surplus materials in Elsewhere’s collection to investigate wartime production, distribution of goods, and post-war labor force reformation.

By creating “body bag” shapes out of American WWII military tents stuffed with army materials, Surplusallows the viewer to meditate on the current, collective complicity in this institutional cycle – the forgetting, denial, and fear of endless repetition.

The accompanying video shows Ferris multiplying his image to mimic soldiers marching in a line, and implicates the artist himself as a complicit subject.

Through this installation, Ferris asks: “How could the labor of ages be represented and not distilled? How can a mountain of surplus be subsumed into another form while losing nothing? Can one work with objects so tightly associated with violence and not feel the weight of their history in the residue?”

Surplus Surplus
Surplus Surplus
Surplus Surplus
Surplus Surplus
Surplus Surplus
Surplus Surplus
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Seth Ferris
Seth Ferris

Seth Ferris is an artist and designer working across disciplines to critique power visible in urban infrastructure, finance, and cultural production. Using a variety of mediums his work forms a constellation of experimental lectures, media installations, software development and typography. He is currently a MFA candidate at the University of California at San Diego where he also teaches in the Speculative Design program.

During his residency at Elsewhere, Ferris created Surplus Surplus.

Elsewhere Living Museum & Artist Residency
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