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WHAT WE SAY

Ben Dawson’s freeform CGI practice takes viewers into the strange outer realms of uncharted virtual landscapes. His new work, Silence is deafening when it’s all said, developed through the FLAMIN Fellowship, draws on the Bishopsgate Institute’s LGBTQIA+ Archives, which the artist is manipulating using 3D-scanning software to explore the history of language in relation to HIV and AIDS. This ambitious research- led approach is an exciting new venture in his practice, and we are excited to see how the work develops.

BIO

Ben Dawson (he/they) is a queer artist based in east London, working between digital and physical spaces. Through his practice, Dawson considers the convergence and divergence of our identities between the ‘real’ and the ‘virtual’ in the age of the internet’s omnipresence. His work poses ethical questions around the notions of autonomy, agency and fiction, and considers the complex governance of bodies by socio-political conditions.

Dawson’s practice moves between digital media, animation, film, printed matter and objects. In his work, traces of the digital are ripped out into the physical realm, with material objects providing haptic connections to animated videos, and vice versa. Rather than seek to provide simple answers to complex problems, Dawson poses new questions that dissect ideas of digital materiality.