Rodney Graham: Phonokinetoscope

<p>Urban parkland, invention and repetition are the key motifs of Rodney Graham’s <em>Phonokinetoscope</em> (2001). Drawing together Graham’s early commitment to photography and subsequent investigations into film, music and installation, the work consists of a turntable driving a projector, a vinyl LP with psychedelic rock song written and performed by the artist, and a 16mm film loop featuring Graham riding a bicycle around Berlin’s Tiergarten, while tripping on acid.</p> <p>In this book, Shepherd Steiner discusses <em>Phonokinetoscope</em> as a pivotal work in the context of the artist’s early explorations of proto-cinema and later preoccupations with the ‘temporal object’. He uncovers a practice indebted to deconstruction and a picture of an artist engaged in the most pressing issues confronting contemporary art and theory: reference, mimesis, performance, the legacy of minimalism, topology, irony and memory.</p>