Jaygo Bloom
Youtube Video Installation, 2008
Television Installation
Varying dimensions
In this work Jaygo Bloom created a montage of video narratives, appropriated from YouTube. In doing so, Bloom produced a concentrated piece, which collated film from a fluctuating global archive of communication and response to the subject of birth. Pulling together seemingly incompatible elements which alternate between the digital and the physical, Bloom offers us an alternative view of the birthing process; one which paradoxically is technology driven yet nevertheless able to expose the lucid emotional state of mothers.
Zap, You're pregnant!, 2008
Video Installation
Varying dimensions
Jaygo Bloom’s audiovisual installation combines the digital/technological intervention evident within the maternity ward. Created in response to a questionnaire that charted the emotional responses of expectant mothers, he also drew on the institute’s reliance on machines to evaluate the birthing process through the graphs, the beeps and the sounds of the instruments surrounding the mother. There is a sense of entropic disorder within the visual imagery he employed, this, combined with the use of alchemical and scientific motifs, draws comparisons with the ancient notion of rebirth and transformation. To inform his work Bloom also spent time with Professor Jim Dornan, Director of Fetal Medicine at the Royal Maternity Hospital, Belfast and former Senior Vice President of the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. During his residency, Bloom witnessed various obstetric procedures and found that technology was a shared passion and an intrinsic tool in each of the collaborative partner’s practice, though their philosophical consideration of it differed.