buh buh buh (proposal for a collating machine)

2008
Clout, Lucy
Lucy Clout works primarily in video. Her practice examines the embodied experience of language, in particular minor-speech (disposable or insignificant), to think about sickness and pleasure. She understands her works as ‘home movies’: they are not essays or arguments but collages of tone, building upon histories of diaristic, queer and feminist filmmaking. For buh buh buh (proposal for a collating machine), 2008, Clout uses her body as a filmic McGuffin – a subtly placed prop, passive but integral to the plot’s development. In the film, she attempts to make her body more object-like and obedient, as she uses it to demonstrate the mechanism of a paper-collating machine. However, her representation is undermined by nervous coughs and the apologetic spiel of someone who is palpably resisting every minute. As she skips around the space, mimicking the machine in motion, it emerges that Clout is describing the elephant in the room: the artist’s body held up against the image of an artist.
  • Artwork Details: running time: 10 minutes 47seconds
  • Edition: 1 of 3 + 2 AP
  • Material description: Colour, Stereo, 4:3, SD video
  • Credit line: © the artist. Image courtesy of the artist
  • Theme:
  • Medium: Film and Audio Visual
  • Accession number: ACC40/2020

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