Crusade.

‘Crusade' was a solo multimedia exhibition, which emerged from a process of site-specific research into the history of the city of St Louis. In response to a paper delivered to the conference ‘Shades of Black' at Duke University in 2001, Piper was approached by Shannon Fitzgerald, Chief Curator at the Contemporary Art Museum, St Louis, to develop a project.
Piper subsequently engaged in a series of research visits to St Louis. Exploring local archive material in the light of postcolonial theory and the semiology of local public monumental sculpture, Piper began to examine a set of conceptual relationships linking the founding of St Louis (1763), its position in the wake of the Louisiana Purchase (1803), and its site as a key location in the growing conflict between North and South in the Dred Scott case (1857). Using these historical strands, Piper proposed a reading of St Louis as a site of symbolic tensions between the ‘known' and the ‘other'.
These themes were integrated into a series of multi-channel animated video collages presented across high-definition plasma screens. Specific technical research was conducted in collaboration with local specialists around the streaming of high-definition video within a gallery setting.
‘Chilly Water', a component installation of the exhibition, evoked the memory of Dred Scott (1799-1858) through the exploration of narratives of slave escape. This installation utilised Piper's technical research, funded through an Arts Council Decibel award (2004), into the use of computers to randomly assemble visual and narrative sequences in real time in the gallery space.
A Public Lecture was given as a part of this exhibition, alongside the publication of an illustrated gallery guide which included an essay by the artist. This research was also presented as a conference paper at the Raphael Samuel Memorial Event, Conway Hall, London, 2004.