The Place of Dead Rhoades is a publication by the collaborative research group NEUSCHLOSS. It was produced as an artefact to document the realisation of a pedagogic project within the context of the BALTIC’s BxNU Symposium programme for the exhibition Jason Rhoades, Four Roads at BALTIC Centre of Contemporary Art in 2015. The Place of Dead Rhoades aims to document and critique the process by which such pedagogic symposia are often positioned. It sets out to destabilise the conventional order of roles and authority in the context of educational outreach talks in order to produce a more meaningful answer to the question, “what goes on inside the mind of an artist?”
The Place of Dead Rhoades is framed by its pedagogic context, both as an indirect output of the BALTIC’s educational program and a mediating artefact of a set of procedures and events enacted by Fine Art teaching staff. It draws from contemporary debates on the role of the archive and histories of documenting performances, events and exhibitions. Taking these archival contexts as a key methodological starting point, The Place of Dead Rhoades is a combination of written correspondence between artists and organisers, participants, contributors and audience. Notes, drawings and transcripts are collated and ordered into a new sequence of events; reiterating the initial aims of the event and positioning itself as a piece of practice in itself.
The book was co-authored by the members of NEUSCHLOSS (Fiona Crisp, Charles Danby, Allan Hughes, Mark Jackson, Ronan McCrea, Tom O’Sullivan& Joanne Tatham) with contributions from AAS (artist collective), Ant Macari (artist), Holly Pester (Poet), Paula Smithard (psychoanalyst), Neal White (artist) & Peter Wolfendale (philosopher). The book was printed by students on arisograph at Foundation Press in Sunderland and was published in conjunction with IMT Gallery in London. The title of the book, The Place of Dead Rhoades, is a reference to William Burroughs 1983 novel, ‘The Place of Dead Roads’ and resonates with Rhoades mythic construction of the Modern American Hero (artistas gunslinger).
The Place of Dead Rhoades has been exhibited and distributed through Gallery North, Northumbria University, IMT Gallery (London), Sluice Art Fair (London) and the Dublin Art Book Fair. Further copies have been distributed through NEUSCHLOSS colleagues, associates and networks.
