007_armwrestling


Arm Wrestling #1 – #2, 2012
 
05’37”
Sonic interventions in urban space, London.
Video documentation
Courtesy of the artist
 
“Arm Wrestling #1- #2” is a series of itinerant site-specific interventions in which two cassette players, placed opposite each other, perform vocal arm wrestling in various public spaces in London between September and October 2012.
When arm-wrestling, two people break an initial balance in a play of physical forces.
In this project, the arm wrestling is enacted each time by two recorded voices.
Carrying different political connotations and embodying different degrees of powers, they question the limits of communication.
Here, the game is about hegemony in communication with each arm wrestling forming a metaphor for the tension and failures of the communication process. “Arm Wrestling #1 (Swearing)” pitches two recorded voices, an English and a Scottish one, against each other.
“Arm Wrestling #2 (Are you listening to me?)” involves a native British speaker continuously correcting the Indian accent of the other voice.