Freddie Mason

The viscous is neither solid nor liquid. Nor is it one thing, but rather a quality of resistance and of flow, of stickiness and of slipperiness. My research focuses on the history of this material state since industrialization, tracing and exploring its position in technological and scientific history, as well as in the domains of modern theory and aesthetics. 

With the technologization of the viscous in the 19th century, there has been a proliferation in the variety of its forms, both materially and imaginatively. Mechanised industry required lubricants and oil distillation produced waste products that were refined to form Vaseline. From this age, new viscous forms emerged, products from plastic (and plastic explosives) to cosmetics, glycerine, asphalt, sexual lubrication, hydro- and aero- gels, even anti-climb paint. 

The development of the viscous in the material world over the last 150 years is echoed in the realms of cultural discourse. The viscous has been used both metaphorically and literally by an extraordinary variety of ideologies, theories, artistic movements and practices. It has been feared, enjoyed, metaphorized, ironised, eroticised and even politicised. 

This is the history of our imagination of matter as it sticks, slips, creeps, oozes, trembles, bursts, makes a mess, then cleans it up.