2 seconds of clapping
(Kids are people too)
In this 8' 09" black and white video, time and place take on another significance. The environment in which social categorizing generally happens is not necessarily contingent upon, or sensitive to, the individual features of each member, which escape generalizations. One such grouping is that of the officially underrepresented, children and teenagers, whose diverging voices are, often, squashed into a frame. Already taxed on the milk they are ‘nourished’ with, these ‘growing into’ citizens are regularly deprived of their voices, or, at best, represented through decision-making adults.
The group show Revolv∙er will run from April 28 until May 26, 2012 at the Phytorio, Visual Artists Association, Nicosia
(Kids are people too)
In this 8' 09" black and white video, time and place take on another significance. The environment in which social categorizing generally happens is not necessarily contingent upon, or sensitive to, the individual features of each member, which escape generalizations. One such grouping is that of the officially underrepresented, children and teenagers, whose diverging voices are, often, squashed into a frame. Already taxed on the milk they are ‘nourished’ with, these ‘growing into’ citizens are regularly deprived of their voices, or, at best, represented through decision-making adults.
Artist and architect, Alkis
Hadjiandreou, takes off from the ‘real’ setting of an American TV series from
the 1980s called, Kids are people too,
hosted by actor, Michael Young. Hadjiandreou re-treats a speedy and cheesy entertainment
show with an endoscopic meticulousness. The children and teenagers in the audience
are brought to the forefront of their own portraits. Zooming into the
experience of being sidelined by virtue of categorization, the artist imagines
what these individual portraits might look like, decontextualized from the
blurriness of unruly media projection. Slowing down the rhythm of this TV show,
suggesting that we, too, take our time to consider who each ‘kid’ might be, the
video dissects, in parts, the imagery of these mashed-up children and teenagers.
The result works as a moving
visual and sound rendering decelerated to show how fragile these profiles are.
Time is prolonged without dictating limits, to neutralize the misconfiguration
of the ‘kids’ in the show. Hadjiandreou’s images perform a sort of unpacking of
the mass, where the crowd is defined each time by authorities and regulators, institutions and guardians. A teenage
audience staged to applaud celebrities, making themselves ‘personalities’ by
inference, is powerfully transformed anew into a space pixelated with self
determined young people whose clapping celebrates their own eccentricities.
The group show Revolv∙er will run from April 28 until May 26, 2012 at the Phytorio, Visual Artists Association, Nicosia
Maria Petrides – Independent Writer
