Get to the Chopper
Single-channel video installation, silet, color
5:06 (looped)
2009
Get to the chopper reduces Arnold Schwarzenegger's altruistic plea for escape to a mute formal gesture. Six lengths of landscaping lumber were converted into makeshift barber poles, green-screen green, blaze orange, and low-grade wood grain replacing red, white, and blue. The unassuming yet garish spinning poles are, in turn, projected back onto six more lengths of landscaping lumber in the gallery space. Get to the chopper utilizes sculptural tactics to disperse the contents of the video field across disjointed planes, the projected objects awkwardly mapped onto their real world equivalents. The projected trajectory of the chopper blades are converted into the sloppy meanderings of a home-made reproduction of a signifier of medieval medical practices, and Arnold's attempt at escape is deflated into a hackneyed visual illusion.
