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he Contents of a House attempts to catalogue everything you can see in the house in the hope that something of the unseen, the unspoken - even the unspeakable - will emerge. This subversive promenade performance takes the form of a tour, guided by Peter Reder himself. Images, video, anecdotes and personal interaction will reanimate the building and the artefacts within it, with perhaps a touch of fantasy to bring Preston Manor's past to life. Preston Manor is the epitome of Edwardian glamour, yet its history reaches back to the Domesday Book. Perched on the outskirts of Brighton & Hove, this obscure, often overlooked place has become a repository of memory over the centuries: a trove of objects, images and histories. What are they, and what do they mean? Peter Reder said: "I'd like to do for the guided tour what Bruce Chatwin did for the travel book. The narrative is given shape by the journey, but is just as much about the digressions, interruptions and personal revelations along the way. My work is contemplative in character. It's not about what you can see, but what it provokes in the viewer; memories and associations that I try to bring to the surface. Someone once told me (quoting, or possibly mis-quoting, Jacques Lacan) that the only true human contact comes in the form of jokes, insults and misunderstandings. All three find expression in my work." Peter Reder was born in 1960 in London, where he continues to live and work. He studied music in London and theatre in Paris and has been creating original performance, video and installation works since 1993. He has produced work in the UK for LIFT (London International Festival of Theatre), National Theatre and South London Gallery, and internationally in Europe, USA, Singapore and Australia. His site-based work has been seen in some of the world's great museums, galleries, and public buildings, including Somerset House in London, Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, National Museum of Singapore, Carnegie Museum in Pittsburgh and Vancouver Art Gallery.

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2013 (1 listings)