Now I have a machine gun. Ho ho ho.

Fastest kick in a knockout: 72 MPH.

I’m the fucking Energizer bunny.

Pain don’t hurt.

Since the start of the residency I have watched 22.58 hours of action films, almost a full day. It seems a fitting way to research a piece of work over the christmas break, a time when many people are glued to the television anyway. By the end of the residency I want to take this to a duration of 24 hours. An endurance performance for the lazy – the passivity of watching these movies is emphasized by the action-packed genre of the films.

Five Day Locker Piece, Chris Burden, 1970

April 26-30, 1971 University of California, Irvine

I was locked in locker No.5 for five consecutive days and did not leave the locker during this time. The locker measurements were two feet high, two feet wide, three feet deep. I stopped eating several days prior to entry, thereby eliminating the problem of solid waste. The locker directly above me contained five gallons of bottled water; the locker below me contained an empty five-gallon bottle.

The act of submissively consuming a sanitised form of action and danger in Hollywood action films starkly contrasts with what we think of as iconic endurance works (see Burden’s Five Day Locker Piece), which often involve pain, deprivation and trauma. The action films that I have been watching glorify pain, trauma and survival – something which could also be said of some of the endurance works of the early seventies . The difference is in the presentation: endurance performances from that time often used deadpan text and scant use of black and white photography; Hollywood uses technicolour and surround sound.

Live Traces is concerned with the documentation of performance – something that my practice often plays with. I’ve been thinking about how to negotiate documenting my action film marathon, marrying the seventies limited documentation of performance with the Hollywood over the top action aesthetic. Perhaps using photography to create a new visual representation of the performance rather than as a document.

from the Theaters series, Hiroshi Sugimoto, 1993

Sugimoto’s Theaters images beautifully documents an essentially durational experience in one frame.

As with the sound work Versus, I think I will work with the original material qualities of the movies I watched, to both document my action movie marathon and create new images as works in their own right, not ‘merely’ a document. I would like the images to provide enough visual information to connote the violence, theatricality and viscerality of the action films, but not enough to be able to pinpoint an image to a film. What I like about the tension of a still image in relation to alive performance is how information-poor a photograph actually is – yet the very fact that a viewer may not be able to give a concrete ‘reading’ of an image is what makes it exciting, particularly in terms of performance.

Photographers who work in a non-indexical, non-descriptive way often prompt the viewer to compare the image with their own storehouse of visual references and typologies – by depriving the viewer of visual information yet resounding with something familiar.

Ground No. 30, Uta Barth, 1994

The images I will make from the fifteen films I have watched so far will allude to a typological representation of an action hero.

The squares represent a single wall mounted motion sensor speaker. When activated by walking past each speaker will play one of the following sound bites.

Please click on the names below to hear audio.

Sly

Chuck

Jean

Steven

Bruce

Arnie

Appropriation of films and film ephemera has been seen in contemporary art since the 1930s, but I thought that the two series below (Baldessari’s Blasted Allegories and Divola’s Continuity: Evidency of Agression) were particularly pertinent to the work I’m making.

Blasted Allegories (Colorful Sentence): … Attempt Boring. (Nothing But Blue Skies Do I See)
John Baldessari, 1978

‘Film stills are useful to Baldessari precisely because they are detached from the movie, cut away from their meaningful context. His inventory of film stills constitutes a deep image bank of 20th century American culture, a proliferation of images that haunt us, or at least those of us old enough to remember watching black-and-white movies on TV in the afternoons after school. Arguably those born after about 1980 have internalized an entirely different kind of image bank, a digital one, which exists without limits, instantly available, taking up no space, and requiring only a wireless connection and a screen. In any case, Baldessari’s image repertoire invokes a circulation of unspecified yet familiar narrative situations, which move through our unconscious, constituting material forms on which we can project our individual lives. The prevalence of black-and-white film stills in his work only adds to the sense of haunting: after all, ghosts exist on a grey scale, they repeat themselves, and they can’t leave.’ Read more.

Evidence of Aggression- From “Contiuity” / Evidence of Agression # 5
John Divola, 1995

‘These representations of elegant dining and lounge areas, geometrically stylized hallways, and wretched bedroom apartments   conjure up the gangster, fallen woman, and mad scientist cycles at which Warner Brothers excelled. They record a technical virtuosity and a sometimes opulent splendor meant to cheer audiences accustomed to waiting in the breadlines of depression-era America. Even if one cannot correlate these photographs with particular films–not unlikely, since most have slipped into oblivion, the first effect they may well produce in a viewer (as they did in me) is a sense of revisiting the familiar. Surely few members of our image-saturated culture would deny acquaintance with these or similar scenes or fail to recognize them as somehow related to cinema…

If we conceive of a film as an artificial unity of space and time, these images are temporal outtakes, documents of excluded moments and possibilities. They are scenes from movies never made whose plot details we must invent. Neither the actual set still nor the finished film provides much assistance in this game, however. The solitary walk of the man with the cane or the gentleman bending to talk with a seated colleague remain shrouded in mystery. It is impossible to scrutinize these images or watch the movies to which they contribute and assign any narrative significance to these set stills, since every interior in these film productions was regularly photographed by studio photographers. The surfeit of these immense image inventories (of which this book reproduces only a tiny subset) contributes to the inscrutability of each set still. They are records of non-events, accidents and chance occurrences, rich with interstitial information. ‘ Read more.

From Susan Sontag’s Notes on “Camp”:

‘…the essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural:of artifice and exaggeration…Camp taste has an affinity for certain arts rather than others…movie criticism (like lists of “The 10 Best Bad Movies I Have Seen”) is probably the greatest popularizer of Camp taste today, because most people still go to the movies in a high-spirited and unpretentious way.’

Please click on names below for audio.

Jean

Arnie

Sly

It’s surprisingly difficult to find battle cries that aren’t fighting for aural space with an orchestral soundtrack, cheers, multiple gunshots or sirens. You would have thought that directors would let Bruce (Lee or Willis) convey their ‘power’ alone. For the motion sensor piece to work, it’s important that the fighting sounds are isolated from their original context: the absurdity of the sounds work best alone, and in order for each sound to work ‘in conversation’ with each other they don’t need conflicting music or background noise. When heard out of context, eg in very short recorded snapshots, the sounds appear extremely visceral, yet very staged. The conflict between the animalistic, and the sanitised Hollywoodesque danger seen in films such as Die Hard is what I am interested in.

Focusing on this idea helped me when choosing which action heroes’ battle cries to use. Fights which seemed too real and not theatrical enough were discarded (Charles Bronson as Chaney in Hard Times). Some, although portraying a macho and aggressive fighting style, included too many gun or sword fighting sounds (John Wayne as Ethan Edwards in The Searchers). After considering why these were no nos for the work, it’s brought me to the conclusion that what is most appropriate for the piece is quite a narrow representation of the action hero: 1980s action men.

The 80s was the ‘action era’; typified by Chuck Norris, Arnold Schwarzengger, Bruce Willis, Sylvester Stallone, Jean Claude van Damme, and Steven Seagal.  The fight scenes in films such as First Blood, The Running Man, Die Hard and Tango and Cash may have used guns, swords, blunt instruments and martial arts at times, but it is one on one fist fighting that exemplifies the overly dramatic 80s fight scene. These fights were camp and homoerotic: big sweaty men with guns. The sounds I will be using for the work are from fist fights in films and therefore flesh on flesh, are even more overtly sexual. Again, the isolation from the original context makes the sounds more ambiguous.

It is this era of action heroes that portray the most absurd and un-gritty representation of fighting. Although these action heroes may at first glance seem menacing, the use of baby oil and steroids connote high-camp and a kitsch aesthetic. As for the battle sounds, although at times carnal-sounding, they are so theatrical as to sound ridiculous, silly, and perhaps playful. The characters are all brawn and no brain. As Peter Rainer of the Los Angeles Times puts it:

‘Arnold Schwarzenegger is practically a theme park all by himself, which is why he’s emblematic of the new action-fantasy epic. His saving grace as an action hero is that he’s aware of how overblown he comes across. He doesn’t really resemble how most men would care to look, and that’s the joke. You laugh because he makes you realize that this–this!!–is how you thought you wanted to look. His he-man exaggerations are the real thing but they’re also a goof.’

From top: Sylvester Stalone as Rambo, Bruce Lee as Lee, Arnold Schwarzenegger as a smiling Terminator, ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin as Dan Paine, Bruce Willis as John McClane and John Wayne as Ethan Edwards.

All images from fan art sites. I’m interested in the dedication, enthusiasm and admiration of the fans found in images like these. The website The Stallone Zone is particularly worth a visit.

Hello. I’m going to be using the Live Traces residency as a testing ground for my ideas and projects, a sort of public workbook. Firstly, a little about my practice:

I explore notions of the performer, macho and the absurd through my performative practice. My work also addresses the veracity of the archive, particularly the role of lens-based media and documentation in live artworks. I am a PVAC artist associate, Director of Project Space 11, and run Salon South West, an art theory reading group.

Much of my work deals with the fictive or exaggerated identities created in both pop culture and iconic performance art works. I often explore the concept of machismo; whether by referencing performance works from the late 60s and early 70s (Chris Burden’s Shoot), cinematic action heroes ( Rambo, James Bond) or historic local heroes (Francis Drake, Robert Falcon Scott – I live in Plymouth) in my work. In my performative practice I attempt to inhabit and explore these macho identities so alien from my own. The contrast between my nature and the assumed heroic male personality often means that the performances can seem absurd, futile or as ‘failures’.

I’m also really interested in how other people perceive the idea of heroism. A previous work, Bandstand (documentation of which can be seen here), placed musicians as a mobile bandstand in Central Park. The music played was selected through conversations held with the park users; discussions about notions of heroism and macho icons of pop culture. This music transformed the park from an everyday familiar setting into something more unusual or absurd, almost like a stage set awaiting action – a runner’s jog takes on new connotations when they unexpectedly hear the Rocky theme tune playing live in the park!

I wanted to look further into the idea of the viewer, perhaps inadvertently, stepping into the role of the performer/hero. I would like to make an aural intervention into another space that is very familiar, even mundane. We often think of traditional office spaces as rather bland and corporate sites – not a place you would associate with adventure or heroism. I have been thinking about the use of motion sensors to activate sounds that evoke heroism, and how the person activating the sensor could be seen to have performed that sound. As the heroic theme tunes of Bandstand transformed the atmosphere of the park, so these sounds could project heroic qualities onto the office workers that activated them.

One of the most iconic sounds found in action films is the Wilhelm Scream: a frequently used television and film sound effect used in  many Hollywood films. I love that this is so evocative of the type of cinematic, highly staged, unreal and cliched type of action and heroism found in 20th century western cinema. This is the type of heroism that this work will look at: far from the gritty reality of battle, and representative of a high-camp type of macho posturing.

The Wilhelm Scream however, does connote a victim in a performance, not a winning hero. Instead I intend to use audio extracts from battle scenes of iconic hollywood heroes. The speakers when activated would set off an absurd aural depiction of a fight between some of ‘Hollywood’s Greats’ – Bruce Lee versus John Wayne, or Han Solo versus John McClane.

Proposal for an office:

I would like to install six small motion sensor battery powered speakers in some part of the Groundwork South West office building, preferably one with a high footfall such as a corridor. When activated by someone walking past, each speaker would play a fighting noise or phrase from famous Hollywood action heroes eg Rocky, Arnie, Bruce Lee etc.  The use of motion sensors means that the viewer activates the work, whether intentionally or not – by activating the ‘battle-cry’ I am playing with the idea of the office workers taking on these heroic alter-egos.  If more than one employee is in the space, an aural ‘fight’ can take place, by both setting off individual sounds. By inhabiting the context of an office, the work also playfully touches on notions of office politics.

I’ll be developing this on this blog over the course of the next fortnight. Firstly I have to decide and source which battle cries from which films are most appropriate for what I’m trying to achieve. So for now, to Blockbuster…