Nine Years Later (“Girlfriend In A Coma”)
1998, 12 min, color, stereo sound
In the three-part series "Nine Years Later", I revisit video performances I created nearly a decade earlier to songs by the British pop band The Smiths. I betray the apparent effortlessness of my original single-take performances by setting them against the numerous, often self-conscious and painstaking attempts they took to create. With inter-titles, voice-over and repeat-edits, I calibrate my performances according to the outdated video technology I used to record them. In these reappraisals, the body, in its accommodation of the perpetual evolution and obsolescence of technology, is ultimately represented as an enjoying substance. Whether portraying a vindictive martyr in Bigmouth Strikes Again, a suicidal loner in Panic, or a comatose drag queen in Girlfriend In A Coma, I bring the misanthropy, irony and malice in lead-singer Morrissey’s lyrics to life.
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