Ascension (nothing/Something Good)

view demo

1999
video & sound projection (floor to ceiling, wall to wall)
duration: infinite loop

exhibited:
Mark Dean: Ascension (nothing/Something Good), Laurent Delaye Gallery, London, 2000
Evolution: Video Works by Mark Dean, Millenium Square, Leeds, 2001
The Enigma of Arrival, Leeds Art Gallery, 2009
Mark Dean: The Beginning of The End, Beaconsfield, London, 2010
On the (im)possibility of a pure praise poem, Man&Eve, London, 2013

bibliography:
Simon Morrissey,’Nothing here, nothing to fear’, Contemporary Visual Arts, October 1999
Michael Wilson, ‘Mark Dean: Ascension (nothing/Something Good), Art Monthly, April 2000
Black Box Recorder, British Council, London, 2000, ISBN 0-86355-454-7
Evolution, Lumen/Leeds International Film Festival, Leeds, 2001
Arts Council Collection Acquisitions 1989 – 2002, Hayward Gallery Pub, London, 2003, ISBN 1-85332-230-X
Lucy Newman Cleeve, On the (im)possibility of a pure praise poem, catalogue essay, 2013

collections:
1/3: Leeds Art Gallery 
2/3: private collection, Italy
3/3: Arts Council of England

© acknowledgements:
The Sound of Music (1965) 

There is one simple point we have to start from:
The gods never made a single thing out of nothing.
Because, if one things frightens people, it is
that so much happens, on earth and out in space,
the reasons for which seem somehow to escape them,
and they fill in the gap by putting it down to the gods.
That is why, once we know that nothing comes from nothing,
we are on the right track already and likely to see
how everything starts and goes on in an ordered sequence
and nothing at all is merely the work of the gods.
Consider: if things could be made from nothing,
there would be no such thing as the cycle of generation,
you could breed men from the sea, and the land would produce
all kinds of fishes and birds, and out of the sky
herds of cattle would come tumbling; wild animals would
turn up in deserts or farmyards without any reason;
You could not count on an apple-tree giving you apples,
but any sort of tree would produce any fruit.
(Lucretius, De Rerum Natura)

Perhaps I had a wicked childhood
Perhaps I had a miserable youth
But somewhere in my wicked, miserable past
There must have been a moment of truth
For here you are, standing there, loving me
Whether or not you should
So somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good
Nothing comes from nothing
Nothing ever could
So somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good
For here you are, standing there, loving me
Whether or not you should
So somewhere in my youth or childhood
I must have done something good
Nothing comes from nothing
Nothing ever could
So somewhere in my youth
Or childhood
I must have done something . . .
Something good
(Rodgers & Hammerstein, The Sound of Music)