exhibitions

STUDIO 12 | CHRIS BOND: THE HITCHCOCK / FELDMAR AFFAIR

Studio 12 Exhibition

Presented by the fictional ‘Ibis Foundation for Film Culture’, The Hitchcock / Feldmar Affair was an exhibition of fake historical artefacts presented in a simulated museum environment. Film director Alfred Hitchcock starred as a character in a tale that could have been lifted from one of his films: a dark fiction that charts the correspondence of an increasingly disturbed film studio security officer (Warren H. Feldmar) as he slides into psychosis. With a meticulous, almost obsessive attention to detail, the fiction that played out in the correspondence between the protagonists also unfolded in the fabricated narrative of the exhibition itself. Appropriating the conventions of the museological display, the exhibition contained a series of fake memoranda, mock period-style portraits, along with explanatory plaques, fake climate measuring devices, imaginary curators, sponsors, critics, essayists and reviews. Informed less by the traditions of institutional critique than by the desire to create a scenario that is as believable and true as it is absurd, Bond’s installation might be considered a homage to the suspension of disbelief.