Artist’s film clip, excerpt03.07.2008 Switzerland 2007, Beta, 7’40 minutesPlaque (Slab) is about ‘taking shape’. Its starting point was archive footage of Canadian musician Glenn Gould. In the 1964 recording, the pianist plays on a TV set surrounded by three faux marble monuments. In Shahryar Nashat’s final edit Glenn Gould appears in a short sequence of jaunty stop-action animation. However, Plaque mostly documents the manufacture of a concrete slab in a factory in the outskirts of Berlin. The proportions of the hefty monolith are reminiscent of the panels seen in Gould’s television set. The question of what the real subject might be is left unclear and rendered unstable through editing and the use of different source material. ‘Wordless Plaque suggests that meaning is a construction site where it is maybe better to peer into the wet concrete than worship at the monolith.’ [Dominic Eichler]