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Gotta
Keep It Up! |
Inport
Video/Performance Art Festival, Tallinn, Estonia 2005 |
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"(Gotta)
Keep it up!" features a set of dumbbells with
7" TV screens as the weights. These screens
are wireless, showing two synchronized videos transmitted
from nearby stations. The artist attempts to hold
the dumbbells over his head for the entire length
of the video content. A thin wire connects the bar
of the dumbbells, via a pulley mounted overhead,
to the artist's genitals. |
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the dumbbells would cause a wire noose to tighten
and emasculate him. The artist must maintain his
macho stance in order to preserve his masculinity.
Mass media images of virility and male stereotyping
play on the TV screens, supported by a pair of audio
tracks. |
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The
artist's natural instinct to protect his genitals,
and the psychological pressure generated by the media
clips for him to maintain his macho stance, create
an untenable position.
Two
video projectors, set opposite each other, light
the performer with the same images visible on the
TV screens. These images, which wrap around his
body, dancing on his naked flesh, are not readable,
but are recognizable as parts of the TVs' images
by their movements and lumenance. |
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He
is clad in this elusive iconography and weighted
down by their distinct (TV) counterparts. The
performer must "keep it up", a term
associated with paranoid fears of erectile dysfunction
and premature ejaculation. As long as he can "keep
it up" he retains his public image, in full
knowledge that it can only last so long. While
many men get away with deceiving onlookers and
even the closest of friends and lovers of their
machismo, the performer must eventually concede
failure to his audience and verbally request
that he be released from his burden. An audience
member cuts the wire
with a nearby pair of snips. The performer
then lowers his dumbbells and exit the area. |
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