18 Films About Ted Serios, Chapter 7

I rust things.

This statement has been at the center for my work for close to two decades now, embracing a multiplicity of meanings across various media. There are three major approaches in the work at large: the mangled surfaces of my corroded photographs, the cryptic tension of the video / expanded cinema pieces, and the caustic field disturbances in sound composition. Blight. Dislocation. Subcutaneousness. Toxicity. Brackishness. Psychic unease. These allusions (amongst others) develop and materialize through various chemical, digital and/or analog means, often an intertwined amalgam. This process seeks to accentuate the instability of these conditions and territories as a series of evocations, hauntings, convulsions, and evanescence.

The corroded photographs date back to the early '90s when i discovered a means of re-activating the photosensitive properties of silver gelatin prints and embedding distressed copper and steel into the surface of the photographs. Not only did this result in a unique patina, but it also introduced time into my work as these photographs demonstrated an ongoing visual transformation. At first, this reaction would be quite pronounced; but even after many years, these corroded photographs exhibited subtle shifts in their bruised surfaces. The subject matter of the photographs often features arson sites, crumbled architectural forms, and the borders between the natural and the man-made. More recently, I have begun to use the human form in the photographs, further complicating the psychological allusions to the work.

Through sound (and more recently video), I continue to investigate these properties of corrosion. Specifically, I have focused on how decay parallels and relates to the perception of time when cycles of activity collapse into stasis, and how that stasis can rupture when any number of pressures are applied. These result from a cross-contamination of ultrasound detection, shortwave reception, surveillance camera observation, moribund radiophonic exploration, and/or electro-magnetic disruption.

Currently, I reside in the San Francisco Bay Area, and I have exhibited internationally at the San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art, the Lausanne Underground Film Festival, the Berkeley Art Museum, WestSpace (Melbourne, Australia), and Diapason (New York). Recorded media has been published through Editions Mego, Ghostly International, Drone Records, Hooker Vision, Intransitive, Semperflorens, Elevator Bath, and The Helen Scarsdale Agency. I have also been awarded residencies at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, Jack Straw Productions (Seattle), and MoKS (Estonia). I have participated in a number of fruitful collaborations with Loren Chasse, Keith Evans, Steven Stapleton, and M.S. Waldron. Until 2015, I was the Vice President and Curatorial Director for 23five Incorporated, a nonprofit organization dedicated to the development and increased awareness of sound arts within the public arena. Through 23five, I co-curated the 2003 San Francisco Electronic Music Festival and the Activating The Medium Festivals from 2007 to 2012.