The Persuaders (2003)

The seven-monitor video installation is created from real-world video recordings of seven individuals barracking for football while watching live broadcasts in their own homes. In these excited states, the human utterances are at the very borders of language.

Entering the space, we are confronted by seven 'urgers', seven figures who alternatively cajole, admonish, exhort and abuse us for sins real or imagined. The installation forms changing 'crowd patterns' as the sudden outbursts combine in unpredictable ways with changing rhythms of tension and release.

"The Persuaders is a new kind of symphony, a sonic pattern of truly felt, deeply embodied sounds uttered by impassioned devotees … it dramatises the surges of energy that go into and come out of people operating at the edge of sociability and at the end of their tethers."
Ross Gibson, POL Oxygen Magazine, Sydney, October 2003

"It is soon apparent that each watches their own game - a different game, at a different time… Time is fragmented, cut up, represented by the artists as an accidental composition of conjunctions - and disjunctions - of sound and gesture. While one watcher regards us with sullen silence, another erupts in a fury that passes just as quickly as it arises. Emotions flicker across faces, and move through the body in twitches tics and grand gestures… Seven individuals alone in their rooms urging on different teams, in different places, at different times, all at once."
Tony MacGregor
Catalogue essay, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, April 2003

c'mon, go hard!
mm, nuh! USELESS!
In the back- Rubbish!
why did you do that you imbecile?!
aah! AAAHH!
get rid of it!
What are you looking at?
grrr-get it out!
c'mon get the crumbs!
where are you?
gah! ah! C'mon go hard- OH!
he's a magnet!
Pick it up, pick it up!
Nice try-but not good enough!
Nobody there!
All sloppy!
C'mon back off!
that's it-hold it in!
Oo..aah, we love that!
What are you DOING?
Yeh, lie down! Lie down!
Keep GOING!
WHAT for?
nuh...oh ... drag it IN!
There was NOTHING in that!
oh lovely! lovely! c'mon guys!
that's it-pick it up-get it out!
yep-yep! eee! ooh...
oh..aah..that's gotta hurt!
don't stuff it up!
Oo, oo- I'm happy!
What's happening here?
he's got it, give it to him...oh!
Oh come on! Going nowhere!
put him down! put him down!
held by the shoelace!
oh..don't.. hold it up!
c'mon..oh..that's a shocker!
who's that to ... the old man?
Pull that back!
make em pay!
c'mon, think about it!
he's done it YES!
too easy!
c'mon do something with it!
thanks you-well done!
give it to him!
Oh...no-one there!
ow..oo...you squealer!
ha-ha-YESsss!
Courage!

Artists

• Chesworth & Leber
• Chesworth, David (1958 - )
• Leber, Sonia (1959 - )

Site

• Australian Centre for the Moving Image, ACMI

Work

• Australian Centre for the Moving Image, ACMI

Works by Same Artist

• 5000 Calls - Cardiff, Five Thousand Calls - Cardiff (2002)
• 5000 Calls - Ljubljana, Five Thousand Calls - Ljubljana (2003)
• 5000 Calls - Prime Installation, Five Thousand Calls - Prime Installation (2000 - )
• The Master's Voice (2001 - )
• Proximities: Local histories / Global entanglements (2006 - )

Books

• MacGregor, Tony, The Persuaders, Australian Centre for the Moving Image, Melbourne, 2003. [ Details... ]