Q-Art London

2 Comments

1. Maggie Learmonth makes this comment

   Thursday 10 November, 2011

   Giles, I really liked your video yesterday and I'm wishing we'd explored the role/persona of the head louse a bit more - the louse can do and say things that a human can't or which would be unacceptable from a human. I'm thinking of how puppets can be used in this way, and of Mike Smith's 'Baby Ikki' persona where Mike dresses up as baby in a nappy and wanders around among crowds or groups of people and behaves exactly like a toddler - doing and saying things he'd never get away with otherwise! I look forward to the next development.

2. Giles Bunch makes this comment

   Tuesday 15 November, 2011

   Hi Maggie and thank you for the words of encouragement! I think the motivation for using the louse as a way of vocalising these ideas about hair and advertising came from problems posed by representation. I always find it difficult making work about issues that I find interesting yet which I may not be completely connected to. After all, I don't have long hair (at the moment) which requires the use of many hair products. I'm not a woman - the target market of the adverts I use in the piece. I also have straight, light-toned, typically western-european hair which fits very neatly into the default posed by much hair-product advertising. The creating of the headlouse as an all-seeing observer came about as a way of sidestepping these problems. Nevertheless if I were to make the piece now, with these ideas in mind I would have posed the video from my (Giles's) perspective and challenged these problems head on rather than avoiding them through the creation of a persona. I remember Edward Said saying something about the possibilities of representation of 'The Other' towards the end of Orientalism (I think). He advocates the possibilities of speaking on behalf of others where due care is given in the hands of an empathetical representative. I think it is an interesting challenge. Thank you for the Mike Smith point, I will look at this.