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'Inner Voices' 'Inner Voices' shows a woman washing down machinery at the end of the working week in a candy factory. She cleans as she has been trained, following precise rules. These are the ablutions that follow excess, the mid-point between labor and repose. The video explores the interface of work-rules with the social strictures placed upon women. Factory health and safety regulations are juxtaposed with meditations on correct female behaviour. The protagonist vocally fuses the codes of the factory floor with the philosophical musings of La Rochefoucauld, whose book of 'moral maxims' was published in 1664. The contemporary relevance of such mantras is questioned here. The listener yearns for more time to consider a particular phrase, but is immediately confronted with another and yet another. One feels overwhelmed by the pressures of reason, of rules. And yet it seems like the physical activity itself -- a woman cleaning -- is quite enough to hold the silence and carry the day. (Text by David Galloway) |
