James McCann | 99 Music Videos | Hatfield House

James Mc Cann is a Cork/Glasgow based artist and Royal College of Art graduate, he is currently studying for a PhD at Glasgow School of Art. His work is usually Sculpture, Video, or Performance based. His most recent work 99 Music Videos, is an ambitious project containing 99 separate films.

“99 Music Videos is a project I have been working on for the last two years. The title is an appropriation of a utilitarian term, which has developed its own history and cultural identity. The number 99 was chosen because it is the largest double digit number. Similarly to the words ‘Music Video’, 99 is a number which has developed it’s own poetics (through ice creams, Nena and Jay Z) while still retaining a utilitarian sense of units and of production. This duality between utilitarianism and poetics is a theme that underlines the project as a whole. I have also been thinking about Walter Benjamin’s writings on the fragment and idea’s as constellation. A constellation as something which has a unique collective identity which only exists as the sum of all its parts.”

As part of GARRINCHA programme, Catalyst Arts presents “Letters of the Archive’. 
This is the second time we have worked with Keats & Chapman, the second hand bookshop on North Street, to disseminate different parts of our archive and this time we are focusing on letters that have been received by or sent into the gallery.  The 25th of June a reading of some of these letters took place in the bookshop. 

An extract of those readings could be seen on this link: https://vimeo.com/132958880