KENNEDY BROWNE
167 PRODUCTION STILL, LIBERTY HALL, dublin, march 2009

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Kennedy Browne is the name under which the two aforementioned artists author a discrete body of work, distinct from their individual practices. This collaborative practice concerns itself with ways of temporarily occupying particular architectural fragments and cultural texts. Often they create incongruous territories between 'real' and artificial; fact and fiction; politics and kitsch. Sources for previous works include an advertising jingle from 1969, a Hollywood film from 1977 and a script excerpt from a 1987 episode of the US TV show 'Dallas'. As a series, these obscure cultural artefacts begin to re-trace an alternative historical trajectory linked to contemporary concerns.

For the 53rd International Art Exhibition, a new video work from Kennedy Browne addresses Dublin as a city of 167 languages and 'the city Google chose' for its EMEA (Europe, Middle East & Africa) operations. By creating a coincidence between a particular iconic architecture (the home of a leading trade union), a constituency of people (those of 167 languages) and a text by Milton Friedman (on how the pencil exemplifies the harmonious potential of the free market economy), Kennedy Browne decipher issues of globalism, migration and linguistic / cultural translation.