| "Kids:
Don't try this at home" |
|
When Motherboard
were invited to participate in the recent exhibition "Stunt Club"
we decided to pass this opportunity over to a talented group of 14-year-old
boys from Oslo who operate under the name of PSG (Project Stupido Grande).
With the help of simple video equipment they initiate and produce impulsive
video stunts in best Jackass style. These stunts frequently result in
injuries such as burns, broken arms and legs and consequent hospital visits. Kee Damslora,
Axel Hjelme, Knut Joner and Seppo Steggell, alias PSG, are all pupils
of class 9B, Uranienborg School, and came together as a video production
team as part of a school project. On Sunday
3 March 2002 PSG debuted as artists at Kunstnernes Hus (the artists house),
Oslo, with a presentation of approximately 45 minutes of video. This screening
was followed by a debate concerning the ethical and artistic aspects of
these activities, where the implications of TV channels' extreme productions
labeled "Kids: Don't try this at home" were also questioned.
We called this event "Motherboard Offspring", and public attendance
exceeded expectations, mainly consisting of about seventy youngsters with
a splattering of adults. PSG can be
seen as part of a western phenomenon, one of many groups of self-organized,
media-savvy youngsters who have been inspired by the homemade prankster
esthetics of TV productions such as Jackass. A typical Jackass program
contains pranks, stunts and hoaxes which are executed in either public
/civic space, or private/domestic spaces. The antics
that occur in public spaces speculate on the reactions of the general
public as either witnesses to a spectacle, or as unsuspecting participants
in the acts themselves. The portrayal of the kicks that the Jackassers
derive from their pranks, as well as the censored faces of the involved
public suggesting that they have not been asked if they want to appear
on TV, sets Jackass apart from earlier TV programs of a similar nature
such as Candid Camera. Jackass projects a roguish, young rebelish disrespect
for authority and control. The private,
or domestic scenes have a Big Brother feeling about them, except that
Big Brother is not at home. The group subjects each other to banal pranks
and toilet humor. The feeling projected through the TV screen is a peer-to-peer,
sibling-like camaraderie of fun and games. The fact that they show each
other in humiliating situations as a result of practical jokes played
on each other suggests that they do not consider themselves smarter, or
more aloof than the unsuspecting victims of the general public. The Jackassers also perform virtuoso feats on skateboards, snowboards, roller blades, bicycles, etc, which confirm that, despite all the tomfoolery, they are in fact skilled athletes. However, unlike athletes performing in formalized sports events (which some of the Jackassrers do as well) they define their own rules and challenges using both urban and rural locations as obstacle courses, or by constructing their own. Even though the challenges may seem absurd, they never the less push their physical and psychological boundaries to the limit. The Jackassers
travel around the world performing their pranks, and a typical program
is a menagerie of video clips hopping from one location to the next, and
back again: from inner city urban locations, to suburbia, and more exclusive
ski resort-type places. Wherever they happen to be, they do not change
the way they behave. They are constant Jackasses operating on the edge
of the norm of everything but their own TV show. PSG reproduce
Jackass almost identically with regards to the stunts they perform and
the style of filming and editing. I say almost because while their videos
initially appear to be replications of something they have seen on TV,
they are also infused with references of their immediate situation - as
youngsters living in a peripheral Northern city who mainly receive impressions
of the rest of the world through the media image projected of it. A young person
growing up in Oslo lives in close proximity to rural areas of forests
and fjords that are often snow-covered during the winter months. An off-piste
snowboarding excursion is only a tram ride away: much cheaper than going
to the cinema. So winter sports, which are an expensive, exotic commodity
for people living elsewhere, are almost second nature to some of these
youngsters. This means that PSG doesn't have to travel to create a feeling
of troubadorial ubiquity, as the Jackassers do. They have exotic "nature"
on their city doorstops. Both skate-
and snowboarding have been glorified by advertising companies to promote
branded products - clothes, shoes, etc, but it is more a specific lifestyle
that is branded rather than the actual products. The lifestyle depicted
in adverts starring skate- and snowboarders is that of the independent
young person, on the one hand creating the illusion of "coolness"
of poor inner city existencies - the street savvy individual surviving
in the urban jungle - and on the other, the romantic notion of the young
rebel in a symbiotic relationship with nature. An assimilation between
rich and poor is created in the media image, reflected in the similarities
of choice of music, dress codes, etc, stemming from the commodification
of street fashion and attitude. The main
intention of TV companies is to please their advertisers. They are more
concerned with capturing and holding the attention of their viewers in
order to promote brands rather than communicating the content of the program.
TV wants passive subjects who act only with their remote controls and
credit cards. But programs such as Jackass have, by default, succeeded
in reversing this passivity by inadvertently stimulating young people
into acts of creativity that take them away from the TV set. Through a
trick of the tail, PSG assimilates notions of life that have been force-fed
to them through media with their own life situation. Simple acts of localized
absurdity (such as snowboarding in the city, presenting Japanese tourists
visiting Oslo with dead fish, and running almost naked through Frogner
Park in the winter) reveal something of their backgrounds - and a little
about how they think people from other countries regard Norwegians. PSG
spend their pocket money on typical Norwegian products, like vanilla sauce
and chocolate pudding, which they consume until they throw up. They choose
to use "rødgrøt" (red porridge) made by Tine as
fake blood rather than using Heinz Ketchup. They also muck around with
titles, credits, poster-like texts and video processing and editing techniques
to suit their own demises. In this way they not only take an ironical
standpoint to themselves, but also make fun of their heroes, the Jackassers.
One woman
who participated in the Offspring debate insisted that PSG engaged in
nothing more than childish copycat activities, void of creativity or artistry.
Though PSG may not consciously reflect over what they do, or consider
it as Art, by their impulsive actions they show that they understand the
context in which they act. They are part of a culture of samplists, where
the notion of the “original”, or the “authentic” is
irrelevant. Just as Jackass sample and modify ideas from earlier TV shows,
PSG in turn sample and modify elements from Jackass in order to tell their
own story. The only way that you could say that this practice is uncreative
is if you don’t understand the context in which it is situated. Moving
on one step further, the fact that PSG was presented within the framework
of an art exhibition in one of Norway’s most prestigious galleries
also renders the question of whether the PSG productions are art or not
also irrelevant. By placing PSG within the context of Stunt Club, PSG
become more than just the sum of their video productions themselves. With
regards to being childish, PSG were quick to point out that, “Hey!
We are children!” PSG are privileged
kids from the best side of town with access to computers and video equipment.
They spend their free time in self-organized group activities rather than
taking part in organized after school activities. They use the city and
the surrounding area as their playground rather than areas commodified
as entertainment spaces that define how they shall behave and how they
should spend their money. They frequently get hurt, or injured, and sometimes
have to go to hospital because of these injuries. However, these injuries
do not exceed those of a 14-year-old engaged in organized sports activities,
such as downhill skiing or football (though they are sometimes of a different
nature). Having seen her child throw up on vanilla sauce, and then eat
more of it and throw up again, one parent who attend the Motherboard Offspring
event commented, "My son can no longer complain about eating food he doesn't like, or say he feels sick as an excuse for not going to school. He has shown me what his limits are." I'd like
to return to the question of the implications of TV channels’ extreme
productions baring the label "Kids, don't try this at home"
by asking what it actually means today? (I remember stories of kids meeting
fatal ends trying to copy the Six Million Dollar Man when I was a teenager
in the seventies. Here the seduction was about having extra-human abilities
that were used to overthrow the bad guys. The Jackass role model depicts
regular people performing challenging acts, apparently just for the hell
of it, while subverting normal conditioned patterns of behavior wherever
they happen to be.) Should the kids try THIS at school instead? - which
is, in effect what PSG does as they produce their videos as part of a
school project? Should the kids try THIS on the streets instead, because
if they try it at home they'll get into trouble with their parents? By
telling the kids not to try THIS at home, are they using reverse psychology,
and encouraging the kids to try THIS anyway? Or is it a paranoid statement
by an older generation of media personalities concerned that their livelihood
will be taken over by a younger generation who can do it better? The bottom
line is probably that while the Jackass team may not want kids to injure
themselves, the TV companies are more concerned about getting sued when
kids are injured in what could be seen as a direct result of their shows.
In any case, whatever the reason, it is an empty warning. If kids have
access to the appropriate tools they will tell their stories through the
same media that has told them stories since they were born. They will
not only tell stories, but will enter into a dialogue with, and opposition
to, the media that has increasingly influenced the way they view the world.
They will have the guts and the tools to speak back to Big Brother. As co-director
of Motherboard, and mother to one of the PSG crew, I felt extremely proud
to present PSG at Stunt Club in the context of art, and also proud to
hear these young people argue for themselves in the follow-up debate.
Stunt Club had a mission to show art that is subversive, extreme, and
that challenges the limits of what art may and may not be about. Several
of the artists were engaged in activities considered taboo - body piercing,
self-mutilation, exhibiting a drug-addicted transvestite as a spectacle.
It was these events that got the most media attention. Ironically - or
should I say, as usual - the media portrayal of these works stripped them
of any artistic value they may have originally possessed and turned them
into public spectacles by playing on the mere shock value of the pieces.
I saw one artist on TV trying to convince me (the viewer) that he was
manipulating the media through his work, which, in the light of the achievements
of groups such as PSG, seems incredibly naive. |
|
Amanda
Steggell UTFLUKT magazine, issue no.02/02 |
|
LINKS |