Against a Rational Basis for Fear
Against a Rational Basis for Fear 
by Adam Scarborough
February 25 – February 26, 2014, 12 - 5 pm
Reception: Tuesday, February 25, 6 – 8pm
Sparring Performance: Wednesday, February 26, 12 – 5pm
chashama 266
266 West 37th Street
266 West 37th Street
New York, NY
Against a Rational Basis for Fear explores the playful, subversive and sometimes menacing ambiguity of language. In its capacity to illuminate, as a tool for communal understanding and individual actualization, language operates as a guardian and gateway to freedom. Used more subversively, language acts to instigate fear, hatred, and even violence: psychological and physical. Drawing references to the semiotics of boxing matches, Victorian advertising, and circus performance, Against a Rational Basis for Fear opens out this ambiguous nature of language and its capacity to instil or dispel fear.
For the second part of the twoday exhibition, Scottish artist Adam Scarborough will challenge members of the public to a oneonone sparring match. Participants will step into the ring with Scarborough and engage in a discussion about their deepest fears; through physical contest and discursive exchange, both participant and artist will attempt to gain an understanding of the role language performs in the rationale of fear, and how better to control it in daytoday life.
Adam Scarborough is an artist whose work creates radical models of participation and engagement in order to uncover and reveal shared points of commonality. His work utilizes text, performance and human activity as a medium for personal exchange and social transformation.
