Paul McCarthy - Family Tyranny/Cultural Soup (1987)
Friday, March 7, 2008
Download this at KaraGarga.
With Mike Kelley.
1987, 15:03 min, color, sound
Writes McCarthy: "I was given access to a community television studio for two days of shooting and one day of editing. I had been given the grant based on a proposal to do a video tape on child abuse. I taped for one day alone and one day with Mike Kelley. I asked Mike Kelley to be the son and I would be the father. There was no written script. After taping for two days, I edited the tapes, making two separate tapes: Family Tyranny and Cultural Soup. They are often shown together."
Writes Kelley: "Paul McCarthy is an artist familiar in the performance art world who is, finally, starting to become more visible in the general art world. I have been a fan of his work for years. I suppose you could say that Paul is an Automatist but the work is grounded not in Jungian Archetypes but rather in everyday social conventions. His version of the primal the one found in store-bought Halloween masks and embodied in plastic dolls. This tape, Family Tyranny and another one, Cultural Soup, come from one taping session. In a public access television studio, Paul built a rough set approximating the type seen in television situation comedies. He called me in to help him out. When I asked what I was supposed to do he said, `I'm the father, and you're the son.' That was it. When I arrived at the studio the cameras were turned on and, I would guess, at least six hours of tape was shot. The two tapes that came out of the taping are just short sections of this mass of material."
Family Tyranny (Modeling and Molding)
1987, 8:08 min. color.
Writes McCarthy: "A father and son without a mother, a house on the hill.
Fatty Daddy Tyranny
Break his back
Wack wack a doo
Daddy, a roly-poly alpiner
Kissin' each other behind the door
So smack and blackened the eye
Of that little punky winker
Slap, slap a doo
Down the stairs we go
Abusive tyranny."
by Paul McCarthy. Starring: Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy. Director/td: Nancy Buchanan. Lighting/Camera: Kevin Brechner. Technical Assistance: Larry D. Jones, Stuart Wesolik. Production/Postproduction: Choice Television. This videotape was funded & produced as part of Open Channels, a program of the Long Beach Museum of Art. Supported by grants from the California Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Cultural Soup
1987, 6:55 min, color.
Writes McCarthy: "The blending of youth - culturalization, the making of a soup. The son begat the father. The father begat the son. Culturalization as masturbation.
The child as a penis.
Revolving cultural conditioning
Perversion, abuse of innocence
By a corporate father
A heritage that is passed on."
Director/td: Nancy Buchanan. Lighting/Camera: Kevin Brechner. Technical Assistance: Larry D. Jones, Stuart Wesolik. Production/Postproduction: Choice Television. This videotape was funded and produced as part of Open Channels, a program of the Long Beach Museum of Art. Supported by grants from the California Arts Council and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Download this at KaraGarga.
at 8:46 PM