"Raining Stones"

Site Specific Sculpture

Souheil Sleiman

 

The kinetic sculpture "Raining Stones" by London-based artist Souheil Sleiman is a representation of the ways in which news are transported within the media. It sets up a circuit of interlinked events triggered by its viewers, thereby directly involving, or implicating them in the final shaping of the work.

At the centre of the piece is a suspended sculptural form made from wax, with pebbles embedded in its mass. These are released, and the wax is melted away, as a result of a synchronised choreography of signals, sensors, heaters and transmitters. Distorted echoes of the action reverberate around the exhibition space in the form of sound and filmed recordings.

The impetus for the work originally came from a news item the artist found

'buried' in a UK newspaper some years ago. It stated briefly that pebbles had been thrown from Israeli helicopters on to Palestinian civilians in reprisals against the Intifada. By combining high and low-tech elements (sophisticat-ed surveillance equipment, wax and pebbles) the piece mirrors the action which first inspired it (helicopters and pebbles), which is in itself a grotesque mimicking of the stones against oppressors that symbolised the Intifada.

Formally, the work refers to traditional ways of sculpture making, where the lost wax method is used to cast the final artwork. Its performative elements locate it in the cultural arena as a form of activism, one that seeks to engage the viewer in the processes of shaping the final artwork which is revealed at the end of the exhibition period.