Guard the Delight (2022) is a sound work (35 mins, 38 secs) and trio of sculptural seats, created as part of Madeleine Stack's exhibition Chaos Rehearsals at Slug, Leipzig (19 August - 10 September, 2022), which asked who will step in to speak when the architectures of the State break down, become waterlogged, and decay.
It offers a landscape made from by-products, offcuts and bastardizations, littered with lyrics and scattered prophecies. It is the lucky rabbit’s foot you place in your pocket when chaos arrives. A lucky eel’s tail is more like it, hangin’ on a keychain—but it’s a slippery little fucker that luck, and you need to get a grip on it.
It mixes together a mush – of teen memories from the north east of england, working in a café to get enough coin to flow down K-holes & quake to new monkey every sunday night – plus an epipen of hi-drama from the birthsite of these tunes (new monkey or makina, being a type of spanish techno that’ll break yer neck) brought thru municipal fiestas mainlined from barcelona – & on top of that comes gaelic euphorias, chewing gum techno, prophets smoking in cafés in a language you don’t yet understand – all this amounting to the signal breakin’ up as you cruise the country roads in some lad’s car stunning for roadkill, hyping for sacrilege, the breaks in the beat meaning you look to make your own way in. With firework and lighter held in a pair of sky-high hands it commands you: GUARD THE DELIGHT.