I produced this video for Bruce Mau (Design) at the turn of the century. Its first iteration was by an invitation only presentation at Downsview Park in 2000. It had its real debut later that year in Vienna at the MAK as part of Wiener Festwochen, who commissioned it. That presentation was an 8 screen, surround audio installation, with 26 objects or clusters of objects from an escalator to a car crash to a ton of batteries. It was then shown at the Gulbenkian in Lisbon just after 9/11. There we were only able to show it projected on a single screen: still 8 images but stitched together and shown on a very wide screen in a very wide theatre (thx to Maris Mezulis and the late Phil Strong). We actually realized that, after all the work we put into making it an immersive environment, it worked better the way we showed it in Lisbon. We reworked it a little and made a new soundtrack with David Wall, and showed it at the Power Plant in Toronto, along with two other moving-image pieces, Zone 6 (16mm loop) and Tokyo Countdown (video installation). We also showed it in Rotterdam and Tokyo (I think) but those screenings are lost to memory. So is the Power Plant one in a way (anyone out there who actually saw it?) And, in the scheme of things, it’s lost. I always thought that we maintained the digital elements such that it could be remounted or repurposed. When I left Bruce Mau Design back in 2010, though, I realized the files did not exist in any way that made sense to me. Over the years a few people who worked on it thought they might have the files. I’ll remain optimistic, but for now they don’t exist and the piece hasn’t been seen for over 20 years.
The piece was “translated”, however, into three derivative products. The first is as a very ambitious photo essay in a book called ReMembering the Body, a project led by Anita Matusevics, with contributions by Barr Gilmore, Robert Kennedy, Kyo Maclear, Maris Mezulis, Chris Bahry, and probably others. It’s a weird book. I won’t lie. But it’s beautiful and intelligent m, and it’s a pretty good document of the theoretical vibe of our commissioners, and perhaps of Andre Lepecki, a dramaturg and dance theorist with whom we collaborated on the project. It’s also a pretty good snapshot of our video installation. In fact, presented as a book, the coherence of the whole project is perhaps better captured. There’s also a fun supernerd typography move in it
Second, it was also the coda to our studio’s 624 page book about visual culture, Life Style. It’s one of the more enduring components of that wonderful bit of hubris.
Third, for some reason we made a single-channel composite of the project, perhaps for media and/or future venues. I have a VHS copy of it (remember, we are at the beginning of the DVD era, so VHS was still the norm for such purposes). I digitized it recently and, though it goes without saying that it’s not the same as the installation versions, it’s quite good. I think we (Robert? Maris? Both with Kyo and me?) did a good job figuring out which sections would be a single image, which would be double or multi-image, how text and titles would be integrated, etc. It’s Oswald’s soundtrack, so I think it was made around the time of the Wiener Festwochen. There is also in situ footage of the Downsview run-through shot by Maris Mezulis (on our shiny new Canon Elura?).
So imperfect and kind of fuzzy as this is. I’m happy to make it available here.
Thank you.
STRESS: AN INVENTORY OF EFFECTS
DIRECTED BY BRUCE MAU AND ANDRE LEPECKI
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR: KYO MACLEAR
WRITTEN BY BRUCE MAU, ANDRE LEPECKI AND KYO MACLEAR
PRODUCED BY JIM SHEDDEN
SOUND COMPOSITION AND DESIGN BY JOHN OSWALD (2000 version)/DAVID WALL (2001 version)
ADDITIONAL SOUND COMPOSITION, DESIGN, AND RIGGING BY PHIL STRONG
IMAGE RESEARCH BY KYO MACLEAR
TECHNICAL PRODUCER AND DIRECTOR, VIDEO DOCUMENTATION, MARIS MEZULIS
EDITED BY ROBERT KENNEDY