Try Keeping an Open Channel

Description:

Try Keeping an Open Channel was a solo exhibition by Australian artist Archie Barry. Featuring three new video works and an artist’s book, the exhibition reflected themes of death, disembodiment, and transness to consider modes of perception and connection that exceed rationalism.

The “channel” of the title conjures multiple forms: a video signal, a waterway, a dream, or an altered state of consciousness. Each video similarly served as a portal to a minor history. Displayed in the lobby of Western Front, Second Line Work revisits Barry’s childhood within The School of Practical Philosophy. Framed by two arched walls, the two-channel video Dream for Reed reflects on the inner life of pioneering trans philanthropist Reed Erickson through his archives of writings, self-portraits, and poetry held at the Transgender Archives at the University of Victoria. In a darkened cinema space at the rear of the gallery, Water Builds Bridges—a video and accompanying artist book—draws on Barry’s own memories of loss and near-death experience. Projected onto a screen angled toward the floor, audience members were invited to view the video while reclined on a pair of custom-made, crushed-velvet seal cushions designed by Barry and fabricated by Ava Katz. 

Across the works, Barry engaged technologies that evoke states of being out-of-body or out-of-time—green screen compositing, psychotropic substances, astral projection, and Erickson’s fictional ASCID (Altered State of Consciousness Induction Device) imagined as a rotary telephone in a garden—to shape trans visions that resist the framework of visibility. By prioritizing sensing over explaining, Barry inquired into the limits and possibilities of representation and corporeality, giving new expression to the vibrancy, uneasiness, and complexity of trans life and loss.

The videos in Try Keeping an Open Channel played on loop, with a total duration of fifty-six minutes. The exhibition was accompanied by the essay “ASCID Trip” (2025) by Susan Stryker. 

During the opening week of the exhibition, Barry performed Wall Drawing (Vescia Pisces), which transformed the gallery into a site of resonance and inscription through vocalizations, lyrical hand movements, and the act of drawing directly onto the gallery wall with custom pencil press-on fingernails.

Curated by Susan Gibb.

Documents:

• Archie Barry: Try Keeping an Open Channel exhibition brochure (2025). Essay by Susan Stryker.