A l e x C r u s e





SHIFT, 1963 - 2016


(after Jean-Paul Kelly’s “Movement in Squares,” 2013)




"Movement in Squares" is a two-channel video comprised of three documentary sources: video appropriated from a Florida-based foreclosure broker who documents the condition of bank-owned properties at the time of their repossession; studio recordings that document retrospective exhibition catalogues of painter Bridget Riley; voice-over narration from filmmaker David Thompson’s 1979 profile of Riley’s work for the Arts Council of Great Britain.(1)

The underwriting of time’s rolling glass margins.
The foreclosed homes in Florida,
although they were in bloom,
did not know how to expand
a failure of turning a
new rhythm on the wheel, the constancy of days, their tyranny
freighted by historical trauma.

The inhabitants had to leave very quickly, the footage showed
an encrypted palette of Zen blues, a life of dim pastel rooms, a life in sound
Hastily scrawled in the mirror in marker,“FUCK ANYBODY WHO COMES INTO MY ROOM.”

Left-half of the frame depicts a broker’s survey through debris--
the depth of it, the depth deeper than the water of the Keys so deep that
the cubic weight com presses the technology out of it,
Fuck anybody who comes into your room.

A short-term memory's conversion to long-term memory requires the passage of time, which allows it to become resistant to interference from competing stimuli or disrupting factors such as  injury or disease. This time-dependent process of stabilization, whereby our experiences achieve a permanent record in our memory, is referred to as "consolidation." (2)

Consolidation is generally regarded as a period of indecision, which ends when the price of the asset breaks beyond the restrictive barriers. Periods of consolidation can be found in charts covering any time interval (i.e. hours, days, etc.), and these periods can last for minutes, days, months or even years. (3)

High Frequency Trading is an extension of Algorithmic Trading. It manages small-sized trade orders to be sent to the market at high speeds, often in milliseconds or microseconds (a millisecond is a thousandth of a second; a microsecond is a thousandth of a millisecond.) (4)

A bloom by drowning or another name, Motion sickness,
also known as kinetosis
also known as travel sickness,
a condition in which a disagreement exists between visually perceived movement and the vestibular system's sense of movement.

The pulp, the weight, the printed matter, its diminished scale, a hallucination of limited fields. The lack orloss of a center. Experiential recursion of the checkerboard: algorithmic trading is known also as ‘black box trading.’ What is sealed off in the container.
Retinal after-images appearing in the recesses of the Hermann Grid Matrix.
“S=O=U=T=H=F=L=O=R=I=D=A in bursts of Althusserian lightning.” (5)









The right side of the frame shows a disembodied hand, palming the texture of optics, pages of Bridget Riley’s destabilizing printed matter, her binocular, sculptural curvature. Fields of glitching perceptualphenomena truss the eye. Surfaces of light expand and tessellate into something incalculable.

In 2006, Bridget Riley’s Untitled (Diagonal Curve) (1966), a black-and-white canvas of dizzying curves, was bought by Jeffrey Deitch at Sotheby's for $2.1 million, nearly three times its $730,000 high estimate and also a record for the artist. (6)

In 1973, 7011 Environ Blvd was constructed--2 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms totaling 1,109 square feet--in Lauderhill, Florida. In 2009 it foreclosed and was resold for $57,900. (7)

How does a structure become feral?
When does architecture become sculpture?
When it cannot support life, when
it can only be written about.

In a 1996 lecture entitled “Painting Now,” Riley references an interpretation of Proust made by Beckett, stating: “ although the text may be strong and durable and able to support a lifetime's work, it cannot be taken for granted and there is no guarantee of permanent possession. It may be mislaid or even lost, and retrieval is very difficult.” (8)











(2) Preston, Alison. “ How does short-term memory work in relation to long-term memory?” Scientific American. 26 Sept 2007.
(3) Investopedia.com, “Consolidation” entry
(4) The New Financial Industry, Alabama Law Review
(5) Dodie Bellamy, from review of Taylor Brady’s Microclimates
(6) Carol Vogel (June 26, 2006), Prosperity Sets the Tone at London Auctions New York Times.
(8) Riley, Bridget (September 1997). "Painting Now". The Burlington Magazine (The Burlington Magazine Publications, Ltd.) 139 (1134): 616–622