Waiting for Barcelona, 2014, Video Excerpt
Three-screen HD video installation. Full length: 4:50 min.
Video is 1080p HD. If pixelated, watch here on Vimeo.
Exhibition text:
Waiting for Barcelona (2014), sees the artists attempt to simultaneously live out and critique Woody Allen’s feature film Vicky Cristina Barcelona during their own shared holiday in the Spanish city. Looking for their own exciting adventure, the artists attempt to embody Vicky and Cristina and set about waiting in a Catalan café for the fictitious protagonist of the movie, Juan Antonio (who never shows up). The cinematic-cum-documentary video installation acts as a form of complicit critique, with the artists questioning their personal and conditioned consumption of screen-based cultures as achievable realities. The pair play on the gap between their expectations and the reality of their experience in Barcelona, as they wait for their reality to match up to their fantasies. Clark Beaumont indulge in Allen’s ‘idealised’ Barcelona, one of adventure and love, but the space proves uncomfortable as the duo must struggle to maintain their two-dimensional personalities while they passively, perpetually wait for a man in order to access the ‘promised’ ideal.
