Nicolas Sassoon
Saturday, 14 June 2014
Work from PANDORA.
“Opening Times: Throughout your Opening Times residency, you’ll be creating new work under the title Pandora. Can you tell us what Pandora is or means to you?
Nicolas Sassoon: Pandora is the name of the street where I’ve been living off and on for the last 4 years. When I first moved here the name of the street stuck with me as a great location for a science fiction plot. The house where I live on Pandora Street is a slightly run-down small suburban home, with a big backyard and a dark basement. I have turned the basement into my studio, which means I have a desk there with my laptop, a dim light and a heater so I don’t freeze during the winter. It’s a great place to work on a computer, I can’t really see the outside world and I lose track of time pretty easily.
When I was first approached to do a residency for Opening Times, the idea of an online residency also stuck with me as a great basis for a science-fiction plot. Usually residencies involve specific sites, where, as an artist, you interact with your surroundings and produce works often based on these interactions. But in the case of Opening Times, the geography of the site isn’t very obvious, since the project is primarily happening online…
I began to inquire about the site of my residency and realised it would be my studio space, and by extension the space of my computer since it is my main work area. Pandora is a project based on this premise. It starts with the
depiction of my studio space and then quickly extends into the duality of the space that I work with on a daily basis. This duality interests me because it is in conflicting opposition in many ways; one space being very concrete and operating within the contingencies of reality, the other space being ethereal and operating within the contingencies of whatever fantasies it can be fed. ” – excerpted from an interview with Opening Times