‘Dragging’ Liveness in the Video Art of The Kingpins

Diana Smith

Abstract


Two bikers with flowing grey locks and leather-clad suits emerge from the darkness mouthing the words to a succession of excessively loud tracks. Their bearded dancing girls adorned in sequins and sparkles soon appear and begin thrusting their hips back and forward to the pulsating beat of the purple, flashing lights. These opening moments of The Kingpins’ multi screen video installation, Rhapsody Happens (2005) first screened at Artspace in 2005 (14 April-7 May) prompted the central questions in this essay regarding the imbricated relationship between live and mediatised performance. The experience of viewing these performances was reminiscent of watching a live music concert and yet simultaneously evocative of the type of performances evident in music video clips. The two bikers, framed by their individual screens, appeared like the lead singers of a perverse rock band with their two back up dancers writhing around in between them. The three life-size screens positioned against the back wall of the gallery were suggestive of a theatrical stage space in which the audience were able to move back and forth between the screens weaving their own networks of response.

 

Full Text:

PDF

References


Auslander, Philip. Liveness: Performance in a Mediatized Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1999).

Bolter, Jay David, and Richard Gruisin. Remediation, Understanding New Media (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999).

Brophy, Phillip. ‘Dragging Wild Angels, Fat Hogs & Cycle Sluts Down to Hell’ (Sydney: Artspace, [catalogue] 2005): unpaginated.

Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990)

Carsley, Gary. ‘Drag-Mash and The Kingpins’ (Sydney: Kaliman Gallery, [catalogue] 2006): unpaginated.

----------------- ‘Drag/Mash’, Eyeline, Contemporary Visual Arts, 62 (2006/2007): 48- 51.

Cramer, Sue. ‘Inhibodress: 1970-1972’ (Brisbane: Institute of Modern Art, 1989)

Crowley, Vicki. ‘Drag Kings “Down Under”: An Archive and Introspective of a Few Aussie Blokes’, in Donna Troka, Kathleen LeBesco, and Jean Bobby Noble (eds.) The Drag King Anthology (New York: Haworth Press, 2002 ): 285-308.

Geczy, Adam, ‘Video Magic at the Performance Space, Sydney’, Art Monthly Australia, 174 (2004), pp.3-6.

Performance Paradigm 4 (May 2008)

Glass, Alexie. ‘The Kingpins: Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again’, Photofile: Contemporary Photomedia+Ideas, Video: Don’t Flick the Switch (2005): 59- 61.

Halberstam, Judith. Female Masculinity (Durham and London: Duke Uni. Press, 1998)

----------------------- Drag Animation, Crazy Art & The Rise of The Kingpins (Sydney: Kaliman Gallery, [catalogue] 2007): unpaginated.

Judd, Craig. ‘The Kingpins: Rhapsody Happens’, Broadsheet, 34, 2 (2005): 127.

Langley, Carol. Under the Sequined Surface: An Insight into Sydney Drag (Sydney: Currency Press, 2006)

Mesiti, Angelica. Online interview. 30 August 2007.

Scott-Norman, Fiona. ‘It's Cool To Be A (Drag) King’, The Age, 18 January, 2008 http://www.theage.com.au/news/arts/its-cool-to-be- adragking/2008/01/17/1200419953872.html

Rush, Michael. New Media in Late 20th-Century Art (London: Thames and Hudson, 2001).


Refbacks

  • There are currently no refbacks.