In The Anticipation of a Future Need to Know – Ash Moniz 
Opening Saturday 17th of September, at 7pm
September 17 – November 1
Townhouse Factory

“In The Anticipation of a Future Need to Know” is a four-part video installation in which artist Ash Moniz recasts the performative rituals involved in the production of official documents and physical records. In excavating the layers of meaning behind these records, this work exposes the way human conduct - movement, speech, and action - is inscribed within the machinery of bureaucratic systems. 

The different scenes tell the inter-related stories of a World Bank Loan from 1980, an agreement for a biometric passport, a corporate advertisement for a paper factory, and a supply chain scheme. When set on a stage, logistical processes that originate in factories, municipal offices, international bodies, and corporations, are stripped of their quotidian normalcy and thrown into relief. 

An orchestrated series of split, decentralized videos plot how a commodity - the physical document - is transformed into a record imbued with meaning. They reflect the transition of manufactured goods into human databases that dictate mobility, identity, nationhood, and personhood.

Presented in an old paper factory, the video installation - in structure and content - dramatizes the corporeal mechanics of logistics, emphasizing the performativity of cogs and their machines.