The Jump Room is a project by artist Richard Whitby, incorporating video, drawing, writing, performance and collaborations. A new book presents all the iterations of the project together, along with texts by Honor Gavin, Virginia Woolf and the artist himself, and a set of new drawings by Sooyon Kim.
This launch event will include a reading from Honor Gavin and a discussion between the artist and curator Kiera Blakey.
The Jump Room takes its name from a conspiracy theory alleging the existence of devices allowing teleportation between Earth and Mars, installed in the form of ordinary looking elevators in several buildings in the US. Theories such as this one seem to explain the world through complex but linear and apparently evidenced narrative.
Whitby is interested in how various kinds of narrative accrue value, be that within the service industry, the conspiracy theorist ‘Truth Community’ or mainstream political campaigning. In this project he uses these ideas, alongside tropes from cinema, performance and contemporary communications media, to explore social, cinematic and commercial fictions. Between 2015 and 2017, elements of The Jump Room project have appeared in London, Seoul and Southend.
The Jump Room takes its name from a conspiracy theory alleging the existence of devices allowing teleportation between Earth and Mars, installed in the form of ordinary looking elevators in several buildings in the US. Theories such as this one seem to explain the world through complex but linear and apparently evidenced narrative.
Whitby is interested in how various kinds of narrative accrue value, be that within the service industry, the conspiracy theorist ‘Truth Community’ or mainstream political campaigning. In this project he uses these ideas, alongside tropes from cinema, performance and contemporary communications media, to explore social, cinematic and commercial fictions. Between 2015 and 2017, elements of The Jump Room project have appeared in London, Seoul and Southend.
The Jump Room is supported by Arts Council England and the Elephant Trust