Walk with Narrator (1997-8)
The narrator in this video is not directed or scripted. The narrator has simply been asked to describe what they have seen in the media recently.. The resulting freewheeling narrative discloses that this narrator is a veteran and he relates his experience of watching TV news to his lived experience. Within the first three minutes of the work, the narrator has punctured the balloon of the media by raising the existential question "what's this all about? what are we even doing here."
The work becomes darker as time progresses, both metaphorically and actually as this walk moves away from the headlights of a main street in suburban America, towards cul-de-sacs. The narration ultimately becomes very surreal, or absurdist as the narration begins to mimic media itself through phantasmic, fantastical imagery, seemingly unrelated to the news media this diatribe began with.
A huge Thank You to Disco San Andreas for his contribution to this work.
Walk with Narrator was shown in Sacrificio del Intelecto, (1999) co-curated by Andrew Mount & Omer Fast. This exhibition included artwork by COMA (Andrew Mount & Omer Fast); Mark Shepard; James Dawson-Hollis and Wade Guyton. In the exhibition, this work was included within an installation environment. The lighting of the space was dominated by magensuim blulbs, reflecting the streetlights at the beginning of the recording, while the visual organization of the video itself is extended outwards, through the dramatic perspectival opportunity of the space.
