Real failure needs no excuse (2012)
Consisting of a series of actions filmed in an empty office building in Glasgow, Real failure needs no excuse investigates the transgressive potential of non-productive action and its relation to labour, work and the imagination. The video presents continuous flows of actions in which materials are ordered, piled, and assembled in various configurations. Precariously balanced structures, visible for only a short time, collapse (because everything, eventually, collapses) to make way for new shapes and arrangements.
The relentless flow of action in the video parallels the motion of capitalist expansion that always demands more and more work. Yet, if we can think of the performer’s actions as a kind of labour, then it is one that postpones indefinitely an end result. In its constant stream of action, it remains forever in the realm of the making where nothing ever gets made; in the realm of production where nothing ever gets produced.
Real failure needs no excuse, 2012, single-channel video, 23min.48s.
