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Imagery drawn from artwork

The Last X Years

Jay Bernard

09.02.25 - Ongoing

Status: On now

Current Locations: Online

The Last X Years is a new digital project by artist and poet Jay Bernard. 

Between 2021-2024, Bernard travelled around the UK interviewing people of all ages and backgrounds, asking what they remember about the 2016 EU referendum. Participants shared a range of perspectives and reflected on how they and the country changed during this turbulent time. These conversations sit at the heart of the project and are presented in a familiar broadcast format.

Determining the sequence of the broadcast is an AI that couples interview excerpts with a repository of news headlines published from 2016 onwards. Instructed to search the internet for articles relating to the referendum, the AI gathered thousands of stories that cover topics such as trade, migration, and sovereignty.  The pairings are made based on the AI's assessment of the relevance between headline and interview. While ordinarily an AI would operate out of sight, the artwork simultaneously conceals and reveals its covert operations and unveils the pairing logic at play.

Between tabs marked 'voice', 'mirror', and 'memory', audiences can hear people's reflections, see the AI's logic, and explore the repository of interviews and headlines.

In The Last X Years, humans and machines are all participants. They are audible and silent, transmitters and receptors, active and activated. Through the project, Bernard brings together and makes apparent the many visible and invisible forces at play during that particular political moment. 

The artist deliberately resists focussing on the new identities of ‘Brexiteer’ and ‘Remainer’ formed in the run up to the referendum that linger to this day. Instead, Bernard chooses to focus on creating a space where people can listen to and engage with perspectives outside of their own while reflecting on the ongoing deployment of digital technology in producing and disseminating information. 

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'The current political and social climate is both familiar and unknown, chaotic and programmatic, amnesiac and highly documented. The Last X Years is therefore both a mirror and a repository, on-going talk-radio from the vanishing past, a memory project that sits as a constant reminder of where the present came from.'

Hear Jay Bernard discuss their interest in exploring our capacity to listen and engage with perspectives outside of our own, and how a seismic political moment instigated the development of this online work.

"The current political and social climate is both familiar and unknown, chaotic and programmatic, amnesiac and highly documented. The Last X Years is therefore both a mirror and a repository, on-going talk-radio from the vanishing past, a memory project that sits as a constant reminder of where the present came from." Jay Bernard
Portrait of Jay Bernard, courtesy of Ajamu X

Jay Bernard

Jay Bernard (FRSL) is a writer from London. Their work is interdisciplinary, critical, queer, and rooted in poetry, the voice and social histories. They won the 2018 Ted Hughes Award for Surge: Side A, a cross-disciplinary exploration of the New Cross Fire in 1981, and The Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award for the poetry collection that followed.

In 2020 Jay was selected to be a part of Thinking Time, an initiative by Artangel that supported early-career artists to research, reflect, and develop their ideas. Recent work includes Crystals of this Social Substance (Serpentine Pavilion, 2021), You are Invited Back to the Land (Tate Britain, 2023) and Far from the Start (Studio Voltaire, 2024).

For one night only, Jay Bernard presented an experimental performance informed by the voices of people across the UK who opened up to the artist about the last seven years. In collaboration with Musarc, one of the UK’s foremost experimental choirs and multi-instrumentalist Petero Kalulé (petals), a performance was devised that presents memories of people across the UK from the post-Brexit landscape, and thoughts on how they and the country have changed. Bernard’s work spans poetry, audio-visual media, graphic illustration, theatre-making, archiving, and film programming. Their work brings together personal recollections with grand political narratives presenting themes of injustice, queerness, family relationships and state surveillance, in critical and unexpected ways. The Last Seven Years was presented in collaboration with Bold tendencies.

The Last Seven Years by Jay Bernard was produced by Artangel and presented in collaboration with Bold tendencies in September 2023. A prelude to the digital commission, it was devised and delivered by Joseph Kohlmaier and Musarc with Petero Kalulé (petals). Performers include Temitope Ajose-Cutting, Jeni Be, Thomas Boudier, Serena Braida, Elizabeth Chan, Ilenia Cipollari, Raphel Famotibe, Rozhina Ghasemizadeh, and Loren McK.

The Last Seven Years Recording credits:
Directed by Anthony Comber-Badu
Camera Operators: Jack Barraclough, Radford Nicholls
Sound Design and mixing: Panos Chountoulidis