Exercise (Djibouti) 2012. Originating in found documentary images of US military exercises in Djibouti and informed by research into athletic achievement, the work makes use of emerging technologies to reflect on the relationship between competitive sport, military training, theatrical performance and dance.
The latest project in Modern Art Oxford’s offsite programme, Exercise (Djibouti) 2012 by John Gerrard
will be presented as a large-scale cinematic installation in the dramatic setting of a disused power station
in Oxford.
Originating in found documentary images of US military exercises in Djibouti (Horn of Africa) and
informed by the artist’s research into athletic achievement, the work makes unprecedented use of
emerging technologies to reflect on the relationship between competitive sport, military training, theatrical
performance and dance.
On a simulacrum of the barren Djibouti landscape, two teams of computer-generated figures, wearing red
and blue - the traditional colours of war gaming - meet daily at dawn to initiate a series of cryptic gestural
routines: precise, repetitive, faintly antagonistic. The scene is a painstaking and extraordinarily detailed
reproduction, constructed by hand within the virtual using photographic and satellite data guides from the
original landscape.
The figures represent a group of elite athletes who were engaged for the project during their training for
the London 2012 Olympic Games and whose actual movements were subsequently digitised using
sophisticated motion-capture technologies. Neither completely synthetic nor strictly real, the work exists
in “real time” (Djibouti: GMT +3 hours), orbiting over a yearly cycle that also incorporates the movements
of sun, moon and stars.
Screening for a three-week period and coinciding with the carrying of the Olympic Flame through Oxford
on the 9 and 10 July, Exercise (Djibouti) 2012 promises an important and contemporary response to the
wider Summer spectacles of athletic competition, collective cooperation, and the exercise and
representation of power.
Exercise (Djibouti) 2012 is commissioned by the Ruskin School of Drawing & Fine Art, Oxford University
Sport and Modern Art Oxford and forms part of the London 2012 Festival. The Festival is a spectacular
12-week nationwide celebration bringing together leading artists from across the world with the very best
from the UK.
Press View: 12-2pm, Friday 6 July 2012
Image: Found research image for Exercise (Djibouti) 2012. Courtesy of Defense Video & Imagery Distribution System.
Info:
MODERN ART OXFORD
30 Pembroke Street - Oxford
Tel: 01865 722 73
Email: info@modernartoxford.org.uk
www.modernartoxford.org.uk
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Old Power Station
Oxford