Michelle Deignan

Red Cheeks
Single channel digital video, 9 mins 26 secs, 2006.

In ‘Red Cheeks', an Irish actor makes a series of presentations to camera at three different locations around London; RTE's (Radio Telefis Eireann) offices at Millbank; The London Irish Women's Centre in Stoke Newington and at Irish Contemporary Art in Kensington. Throughout her earnest performance, she tells us information about the sites and stories about the artist, loosely suggesting associations between the two. At the RTE location, we are told about the artist's first British television appearance; at The London Irish Women's centre we hear about Deignan's altercation with a blind elderly racist and at the possibly fictitious site of Irish Contemporary Art we hear about the artist's interaction with an artwork at Freize Art Fair.

click on images for low res QuickTime movie of 'Red Cheeks'. file size: 20 mb.

"Red Cheeks (2006) presents itself as a tour of Irish institutions found in London: the RTE office at Millbank, the site of Irish Contemporary Art, and the London Irish Women's Centre. The presenter herself is Irish, speaking with the tempered south Dublin accent commonly found on RTE's airwaves. Disrupting this structure, however, are a series of anecdotes about Deignan; we hear of her complicity in an educational documentary about the Sufragettes, agreeing to be chained to a railing to demonstrate some of her methods, in exchange for "some pints of beer."

After informing us of the Women's Centre's capacity to deal with hate crime, the presenter recounts an incident where Deignan confronted an elderly woman making racist comments. Looking evenly at the camera, she says, "In a voice that shook with shock and anger, Michelle said, 'You are a fucking bitch.'" Here, the contrast of the straight-faced delivery and strong language highlights the eruption of the personal into the rigid codifications of television. The institutional structure of each video is infected with an impossible subjectivity, becoming a hybrid of formal distance and frank honesty; the actual subject matter of these works posing as documentaries becomes a shifting site of conflations, relationships and associations."

from the essay, 'What's New? - Televisions Mutual Contract', Chris Fite-Wassilak.