Jeremy Shaw
exhibition “Techno Worlds”
Morning Has Broken
Morning Has Broken (2001) resets the utopian idealism of Cat Stevens’ 1971 titular folk song into the mourning of the end of a rave—a subcultural movement that had been quickly usurped by the mainstream. The Super 8 film documents exhausted ravers pouring out of a legally-sanctioned event in Vancouver at the break of dawn after a night of music, dancing and drugs. By resetting the grainy images of candy ravers within the sentiment of the dated pop hit, the meaning of dawn is shifted from the bohemian political ideals of the 1970s to the hedonistic, techno-utopianism of the late 1990s rave scene.
text by Maxwell Stephans, 2020
Biography
Jeremy Shaw, born in North Vancouver, lives and works in Berlin. He works in a variety of media to explore altered states and the cultural and scientific practices that aspire to map transcendental experience. Often combining and amplifying strategies of verité filmmaking, conceptual art, music video and scientific research, he creates a post-documentary space that complicates expectations of the moving image as a form of testimony. Works by Jeremy Shaw are held in public collections worldwide including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Centre Pompidou, Paris, and Tate Modern, London. He has been featured in international surveys such as the 57th Venice Biennale, and Manifesta 11, Zurich.