Christopher Steadman

With the four channel video installation, 'I am writing this with my left hand although I am strongly right-handed'; Steadman continues to work with issues around loss, memory, and solitude. The source material was filmed in an abandoned psychiatric ward that was built in the 1800's in former East Germany, and follows the trace of footsteps – or is followed by them. An intense study of the evocations and resonances of the site, the work explores ongoing interests around isolation and alienation - be it in a domestic space, a social situation, or an urban landscape. The institutional setting lends itself to thoughts about people who become imprisoned within themselves and restrained by perceptions manufactured by their own minds. The soundtrack (composed by the artist himself) further aids these readings - alternating as it does between stretches of silence and periods of eerie noise and spoken word.