This video was made with four other college students in response to a brief containing only two words: “Race Track”.
We spend a all day at a greyhound race track in south London, which was really fun. Around midday we still didn’t have any good angle how to approach this brief, when Garry came back from the WC all excited and saying that he got it. We followed him reluctantly (especially the girls) back to the male WC where he explained to us his epiphany: which was that the punter could follow the race while in the toilet courtesy to some large speakers installed just above the urinal. We dutifully got all our recording equipment out and started to record some of the races from the toilet.
Back at college, with our sound and no images, we decided that life in London was a rat race and the rest is in the video.
We think we communicate verbally, but our body language tell others more about us than we could ever shout from the top of our voice. Our hands in particular are so descriptive that no dialogs is necessary in order to understand what they are trying to convey. This video is a short study of how much hands have to say I made during my years at college. I hope you will enjoy watching as much as I did making it.
During the Irak war I was watching television with all those visual of destruction that were almost beautiful. Sitting in my sofa I was completely detached from the suffering of those people, and yet I felt something. I felt like a Roman citizen going to the circus enjoying the gladiators fight and the slaying of the beast. I found those image to be revolting yet I couldn’t stop watching them, I was like hypnoptise by them. It reminded me of the video games I was playing at the time, game of killing virtually. Doing some research I discovered that modern armies trained there recruit to kill on similar game, Was I being trained without knowing to become a soldier in the next war. I made this video piece in response to my feeling.