Single channel digital video, 5 mins 18 secs, 2005.
In 'Assumed Position', the artist assumes the role of a street photographer. Her actions taking impromptu photographic portraits of passersby in filmed around a fixed position on a street in London's oldest financial district, St Mary's Axe. Throughout the work, a british male news reporter's voice reads paragraphs from a press release, text for an imagined exhibition of the photographs being taken.
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click on images for QuickTime movie 1 minute excerpt from 'Assumed Position'. file size: 2.5mb.
"'Assumed Position' by Michelle Deignan plays with roles and interpretation. The artist questions the role of the critic, in contextualising and interpretating her actions. A kind of metatext evolves within the work, a knowing, self-reflexive irony which pokes fun at the tradition of street photography and its pretensions to directness and authenticity. In analysing the act of photographing as a performance, Deignan is consciously framing this as a dramatic device. She deconstructs notions of artistic authorship and the interrelations between subject, artwork and 'text'."
from the essay 'Captured: Situations Observed' by Chris Byrne of ARC.
Credits:
Voice Over: Alistair McKie
Camera: Tim Spencer, Ursula Mayer, Wrik Mead
Online Editor: Sue Giovanni
Sound Mix: Athanasios Argianas
© Michelle Deignan 2005