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The Persuaders is a video project built up around changing ‘crowd patterns’ of the human voice.
Entering the space, we are confronted by seven urgers. These seven figures alternatively cajole, admonish, and abuse us – for sins real or imagined. As the installation unfolds, the outbursts combine in unpredictable ways forming changing patterns of tension and release.
The work was created from video recordings of seven individuals watching live football broadcasts in their own homes. In these excited states, the human utterances are at the very borders of language. The work was commissioned by the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne.
'The Persuaders is a new kind of symphony, a sonic pattern of truly
felt,
deeply embodied sounds uttered by impassioned devotees - it dramatises
the
surges of energy that go into and come out of people operating at the
edge
of sociability and at the end of their tethers.'
Ross Gibson, POL Oxygen Magazine, Sydney,
August 2003
'It is soon apparent that each watches their own game - a different
game, at
a different time - time is fragmented, cut up, represented by the artists
as
an accidental composition of conjunctions - and disjunctions - of sound
and
gesture.
'While one watcher regards us with sullen silence,
another erupts in
a fury that passes just as quickly as it arises. Emotions flicker across
faces, and move through the body in twitches tics and grand gestures
- seven
individuals alone in their rooms urging on different teams, in different
places, at different times, all at once.'
Tony MacGregor, Catalogue essay, Australian
Centre for the Moving Image, 2003
'A fascinating theatre of dissociated yet associative, mediated voices...
Through the deft manipulation of sonic and performative minutiae...the
piece
possesses all the fragile beauty of an Eric Satie study.'
Jonathan Marshall, RealTime No.57, Sydney,
October 2003
C'mon, go hard!
Mm, nuh! USELESS!
In the back- rubbish!
WHY did you do that you imbecile?!
Aah! AAAHH!
Get rid of it!
What are you looking at?
Grrr-get it out!
C'mon get the crumbs!
Where are you?
Gah! Ah! C'mon go hard- oh!
He's a magnet!
Pick it up, pick it up!
Nice try-but not good enough!
Nobody there!
All sloppy!
C'mon back off!
That's it-hold it in!
Oo..aah, we love that!
What are you DOING?
Yeh, lie down! Lie down!
Keep going!
WHAT FOR?
Nuh...oh ... Drag it in!
There was NOTHING in that!
Oh lovely! Lovely! C'mon guys!
That's it-pick it up-get it out!
Yep-yep! Eee! Ooh...
Oh..aah..that’s gotta hurt!
Don't stuff it up!
Oo, oo- i’m happy!
What’s happening here?
He's got it, give it to him...oh!
Oh come on! Going nowhere!
Put him down! Put him DOWN!
Held by the shoelace!
Oh..don't.. Hold it up!
C'mon..oh..that's a shocker!
Who's that to ... The old man?
Pull that back!
Make em pay!
C'mon, think about it!
He's done it YES!
Too easy!
C'mon do something with it!
Give it to him!
Oh...no-one there!
Ow..oo...you squealer!
Ha-ha-YESSSS!
Courage!
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