By virtue of its process, we arrive at Seth Price’s ever-evolving video work, Redistribution, in the middle—a reminder that “everybody does, always.”

First conceived as a slide lecture delivered by the artist at the Guggenheim in 2007 and subsequently reconfigured as a long-form video work, the current exhibition at Sadie Coles HQ Kingly Street gallery presents the work in its eleventh edition.

Presented for the first time as a standalone installation, the staging is minimal and untheatrical. In front of the large LED panel screen that occupies the centre of the gallery sits an array of Persian rugs (similar to some that appear in the work) and a scattering of bean bags. A small island of artificial informality amidst the vastness of the white cube, in which visitors can settle for the film’s two-hour runtime.

The original footage from Price’s talk serves as the film’s foundation, which the artist has continually edited, overdubbed, annotated and spliced with various new and archival materials over almost two decades. Each iteration of Redistribution reimagines the last in an endless process of becoming– the work “a box that could stretch to hold anything.”

The result is ambiguous and lacking in formal restraint; a collage of filmic essay, fiction, performance, documentary and diaristic narration that contextualises Price’s practice through a wide array of references, from 9/11 to wine connoisseurship to Bruegel’s 1560 painting ‘Die Kinderspiele’ to the Lascaux caves to copyright law and more. 

Price’s voice guides us through the film, both directly and by proxy–much of his original talk is dubbed and delivered in the voice of a stern woman. Without viewing the work’s predecessors, it’s hard to know exactly what came when, or what has been rewritten, reframed and redefined in this recent iteration. Yet, as Price narrates, links and severs thoughts, a contrast emerges between the oft didactic, removed tone of the young artist and his newer, more playful interjections. By acknowledging moments of youthful pretension or questioning why he “put every wound to work,” Price also recontextualises himself. The sharp edges of persona are softened by moments of personal intimacy that consider the more abstract conditions of life—such as nature, love, desire and time.

As Price reflects upon his practice—and life—he invariably returns to ideas around plasticity. How objects, both art and everyday, are recontextualised yet also remain the same. Drawing together disparate histories, from the literal process of plastic production to fashion trends, he also reveals the plasticity of time itself. A series of personal photographs from the early 2000s, featuring Price, friends, various parties, and the streets of New York, appears both dated and timeless while Price narrates the era’s trends, questioning why everything old seems so cool. Perhaps their familiarity is the result of an ever-increasing cultural regurgitation—indie sleaze has made a comeback after all—and the past draws closer than it seems. As time condenses, it appears out of joint, revealing that the past, present and future are also in flux–that history “can swirl and eddy, and sometimes go backwards.” 

This line of thought could very easily slide too far towards nostalgia, and there are moments in which it comes close. This feels most tangible when Price is talking about early 2000s digital culture and the failed promise of Web 2.0, but even his reflections on the shift caused by COVID-19 generate a similar sense. Not of aimless longing, which is a hallmark of nostalgia, but of mourning. Nostalgia is a mode of stagnation, and Redistribution is, by nature, a living artwork. 

Even as the endless parade of cultural regurgitation exhumes ideas (“turned out of their graves to walk among us again”), Redistribution looks towards the future—towards renewal. The film embodies Price’s view that art is about transformation, mutation and the acceptance of change; in allowing the work to breathe, it moves with the arrow of time, exceeding both its origin and function as artwork. Each iteration of the film is a response to the call of a changing world (both internal and external), the work becoming a platform, not dissimilar to modern social media, where Price can construct and present some version of himself. But what it asks of us in its pace, length and depth evokes something of the early internet’s more long-form content, the kind made for the sake of it, before the influencer-monetisation-complex dominated. With each edition, the box stretches, and the lecture becomes a diary, a record, a mapping of history or life or artistic practice or something still unnamed that remains to be seen.

Seth Price: Redistribution 2026–2007 is on show at Sadie Coles HQ, Kingly Street, until 16th May 2026. For information, visit their website.

Image: Seth Price, Redistribution, 2026-2007 [Still], single-channel video, colour, sound, duration: 2 hrs, 20 min, 14 sec (variable), installation dimensions: variable © Seth Price. Courtesy the Artist and Sadie Coles HQ, London.