Artforum review of Knut Åsdamʼs Egress by Maika Pollack. Åsdam’s camera lovingly details the aesthetics of the employees’ minimum-wage labor. Shuffling packages of savory and sweet edibles under heat lamps or stealing candy bars as a matter of course, the disaffected employees are shown pumping gas and ringing up bottled water for passing motorists. The senseless, repetitive work is defined through their—and their nation’s—relationship to oil, Norway’s largest export. This same economic relationship structures the employees’ landscape. The characters bark orders to one another in lieu of real communication as every interaction is defined in terms of useful labor. (For example, retelling a story of romance gone bad, one woman describes it as “more love hours than can ever be repaid,” lifting a line from the 1987 Mike Kelley piece.) Georges Bataille described art as a glorious waste of excess energy; in the video’s climax, the blond lead spills black gas on concrete as if washing it with oil, expending liquid energy—and money—in blatant defiance of any economic logic.
Posted on: Tue, 19 Nov 2013 08:44:00 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015