That All You Got
My reference event for this video is memories of watching the fights on our small black and white TV with my father in the 50’s when I was a kid. The boxer’s movements were interrupted by the flashes of photographers sitting ringside. I would clench my fists and shoulders for the bell to ring before one of the fighters would go down. I remember the images and names, Archie Moore, Rocky Marziano, Joe Louis and the posters that used to line the streets of a once thriving downtown. Memories of radio broadcasts when the fights were blacked out to the general public of Muhammad Ali’s colorful speech about his experience as a fighter are vivid. The title is borrowed from Ali's chants to George Foreman in their 1974 Rumble in the Jungle Zaire fight taunting Foreman to get up off the canvas after knocking him down. The work combines historic boxing footage of knockdown sequences from matches between Joe Louis/Max Smelling, Rocky Graziano/Tony Zale (Although the encounters in the ring are violent and brutal, there is a strange human urgency between the meeting of flesh and voice, both inside and outside the squared ring. Through a process of combining flashback memories, national archive film footage and visits to one of the last boxing gyms open on the east side of Saint Paul, the working class area of my youth, this work was created. The work considers making the speed of the punch and fighter falling slowed to observe and reflect on the moment of collision. By producing stillness from movement, time is slowed to divulge a new reality. A reality where one might review memories, progress, futures and lives lived through reflection and artistic consideration.
5:00 minute single channel video with audio
2005 |
