In Order of Appearance
2007
Single-channel video, VHS transfer, monitor, sound
5 minutes 32 seconds loop
Eight still images from “In Order of Appearance”, 2007
“Patrick Ward’s In Order of Appearance (2007) presents a looped series of the moments when one VHS recording ends to reveal an older recording ‘underneath’ it. When one recording is stopped, the anomalies or limits of the standard VHS system do not allow for a ‘clean’ join with existing recordings on the tape. Rather, one slowly distorts and dissolves towards a snowy screen that then gradually reveals the emergence of the next (or, more accurately, the previous). What are joined in In Order of Appearance are the final moments of film credit sequences. As one ends, what begins is the ending of the next, and so it goes on. Through In Order of Appearance the cut is made material: it is the object that is linked by all else. We find ourselves perpetually between things, but to suggest that the cut has simply replaced the what-is-joined is to ignore the complexities and contradictions of what is being performed. […]”
—Sam Gathercole
Patrick Ward, exhibition catalogue
Mala galerija, Museum of Modern Art, Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2007