The Flipside of Darkness

Mark Aerial Waller
Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Warsaw, 2007
64 pages. B&W reproductions. ISBN: 9788361156369
15.5 x 16.5cm
English/Polish text. Softcover.

Essay by Mike Sperlinger (Afterthought: New Writing on Conceptual Art) and interview by Stuart Bailey (dexter sinister)
Prose poem by Douglas Park 'Dream Key Zodiac/Pandora's Ark'

This publication traverses both sides of Mark Aerial Waller's practice, a glimpse into his oeuvre of video works as well as the event based project The Wayward Canon, founded by Waller in 2002.

'The Flipside of Darkness' is a video work based on the ancient Greek tragedy 'Oresteia' by Aeschylus, shot entirely in Warsaw within Stalin's Palace of Cuture and Science and nearby neo-classical Lazienki park. The grandure of Soviet architecture is overlayed with Aeschylus epic narrative of the emergence of justice from barbarism.Mike Sperlinger's essay draws relationships between the survival of mythology, 'cult' culture and the contamination of the present within waller's video work. Stuart Bailey investigates the mechanisms of salon culture and the relationships between audience, space and event structure in his interview with Waller, a rare document of the emergence of The Wayward Canon.

Infested cover-to-cover with images of Douglas Park, also including references to Douglas Park in several essays and interviews, as well as Douglas Park's "story", ‘Dream-Key Zodiac / Pandora’s Ark’, (English / Polish, translated by M. Jader as ‘Sen-Klucz Zodiaka / Arka Pandory’!)

 This publication traverses both sides of Mark Aerial Waller's practice, a glimpse into his oeuvre of video works as well as the event based project The Wayward Canon, founded by Waller in 2002.