Monday, November 15, 2010

David Cross - Bounce, 2006

All images, video and text from the artist's website:



Bounce is a one day performance/installation that explores the relationship between pleasure, danger and the uncanny.  Over a seven-hour period the audience are invited to engage/interact with a large inflatable children’s play structure.  The leisurely ambience of the work is recast however by the unforeseen presence of the artist.  Two small eyeholes on the top of the structure reveal a body inside watching the audience from within.  The relational enjoyment of the work is recast by this uncanny moment of uncertainty when play is interrupted by a fragmentary live presence.  Bounce is a performance/intallation that renegotiates the artist/audience relationship mixing conviviality and recreation with violence and phobia.  it navigates a space between the real and fantasy linking the visceral transgression of body art with languages of everyday gratification.




2 comments:

  1. Hey! That's so cool! I used to live in New Plymouth when I was kid. 45 Nevada Drive. How did you hear about this piece? Nice to see somethings have changed. The school teddy bear picnic and the merrilands school pool was as exciting as it got for me. Well at the time I must admit that was pretty exciting, but 'Bounce' would have been out of this world!!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Kirbie, I guess I didn't have comment notifications set up to send to my email. What a small world! I first learned of Cross's work through an advertisement for the university he works at in a catalog/schedule for a performance studies conference I attended in Toronto.

    ReplyDelete