This essay is an extract from a text that has recently featured in Liverpool Art Journal. It comments on the performances of Mexican born artist Coco Fusco and her critical opposition to notions of ‘disembodiment’ that were frequently touted in late 1990s digital theatre theory. Highlighting the subjugated female workers who manufacture the computer hardware that powers our digital age, Fusco raises questions about the industrialized processes that underpin our highly technologized society and about the role of women within them.
Archive for Video and film
REVIEW: One minute on each of the four days before her death, part of Apocalypse Now @ Red Wire Gallery. Until 08 Aug 2009
- Sarah Harbridge One minute on each of the four days before her death
When Josh sent me an excited email a couple of weeks ago, to ask if he could borrow four of my flat screen monitors for Red Wire’s next exhibition, I was happy to oblige, particularly as he was insistent that the work he was putting on them was of mind blowing quality. Great I said, what is it?
Sarah Harbridge’s four screen installation ‘One minute on each of the four days before her death’, consists of individual 60 second video pieces that play on a continuous loop. The ‘her’ as referenced by the title is the artist’s Grandmother. Josh gave me the link to watch it on youtube and I followed it to find a row of twisted and contorted manifestations of an old woman’s face, gasping for breath, wrestling with some moment of indecision between life and death. Even at low resolution, the images were so tightly and unscrupulously framed that every last tortured detail was visible. Read more
REVIEW: Flooded McDonalds @ South London Gallery 16 Jan – 1 March 2009
Superflex Flooded McDonalds
My first encounter with Superflex was during a period of research for an undergraduate essay titled Can Art Change the World? This was my first experience of socially engaged art practice and as such, it planted the seeds of an ongoing fascination with socio-political art production. Read more
