Speech Bubble
Video, 2008
The main concerns of Adam Leech’s work are the semantics of voice versus speech and the political engineering of public space and community. Speech Bubble, began as an investigation into the bankruptcy of the Belgian high-tech speech recognition company, Lernout & Hauspie. Like other multinational corporations, Lernout & Hauspie was a visionary company where money, techno-utopias and the cult of the entrepreneurial personality helped to create a now ubiquitous “marked bubble”. In 2001, it burst. Speech Bubble is a short dialogue between an unemployed salesman and his lover, Magdalena, who seems to be the futuristic product of artificial intelligence. (A.L.)
Artist's Bio:
An American-born painter and video artist. In painting, his major reference is Pointilism. Given its pixelled nature, video is another, contemporary example of pointillist technique and, as with Seurat’s paintings, the colour effect is obtained not by mixing, but by juxtaposing points - or pixels - to make them optically blend into one another. It was almost natural that Leech would take up creating videos and installations. Situating his work within the context of a global economy, Leech is particularly interested in economic failure within institutions and business companies and the psychological dynamics this entails. In Leech’s work, such ‘aesthetics of failure’ stands in sharp contrast with America’s pathological optimism. On a purely descriptive level, without adding any personal comment or critique - both in the video work and on canvas - Leech depicts contemporary American way(s) of life. (Splitfilmfestival)