Page 57 - Studio International - March April 1975

they synchronize, a suggestion of three- progressively competitive activity. The subtlety of strategy, he recognizes that the
dimensionality when they just miss and object of the piece is to get in as many things he uses, whether words or walls or
the drunken effect of uncoordinated FUCKS as possible in 64 seconds. Using etching plates, are drawn out of the
stereoscopy when the error is greatest. a 24 in. loop at 3¼ inches per second, a broader context of the world at large and
This sort of interrelationship of twin- single FUCK is recorded. That FUCK one of those tangential shifts of emphasis
systems operating simultaneously is a is extended for 3o seconds and may at any time bring us face to face with
frequent theme. From 1970: parallel sets transferred to another machine. After the the most emotionally charged of real life
of photographs of a view down a road, loop has been cleaned, two FUCKS are issues : the irrationality of linguistic taboo
each zooming closer to the subject, one recorded, extended for 3o seconds and or the social competitiveness of self-
set using progressive enlargements in the transferred. This process is repeated 16 gratification. At that point he always turns
dark room, the other different shots taken times before the space is filled. The eight- back, but recurrences are sufficiently
farther down the road. From 1972: the minute recording represents an energy frequent to endow the work as whole with
words 'John' and 'Doe' recorded output of approximately 631 FUCKS.' a sense of latent metaphor that is never
separately on two audiotapes; as they He explained in conversation 'the piece allowed to slip over into moralizing.
play back they may momentarily has a built in climax'; after that he was Often it is a matter of verbal double-
synchronize correctly. There are several unable to proceed from sheer exhaustion. take, but often too the activity itself
variants using the word 'Four'. The basis This is all characteristic. The interest strikes uncomfortably poignant analogies.
of all of them is a four-second (15 in.) of Gerald Ferguson's art constantly A print of 1972 takes a square (lour'
audiotape loop with the word recorded emerges not so much in what he is doing sided) etching plate, and on it he draws a
once on it. In one piece a film loop of the as in what that activity generates on line with a needle as close to the edge as
reading of the word accompanies (and another level. To a point this is like Sol he possibly can without slipping off.
sometimes belies) the sound. In another, Lewitt, but whereas Lewitt's art operates Beneath the print the words appear 'Close
a performer with a stop-watch says FOUR through the parallel repetition of the to the edge, but not going over the edge'.
every four seconds ignoring the tape that procedure in the same terms (more The pun is not purely verbal; keeping
replays simultaneously. Yet again the verbally formulated 'ideas' that become one's grip on the curved edge of an
performer listens to the tape and attempts machines to generate more visual etching plate is very precarious.
to memorize the interval; he goes on objects), Gerald Ferguson In a hand-clapping piece from 1972 the
reading as the sound is turned down and characteristically follows through on to artist swings a directional mike in a
continues as, later, it is turned back up. the second level, making it the basis of circular motion at various speeds. First
More simply a second identical loop is other systems of operation that generate one and eventually four performers
replayed along with the first, and then still more levels, and so on. The central attempt to clap precisely as it passes by.
four altogether, each machine on the floor feature of his sensibility is its obliqueness. If they come close the clap is heard twice,
in a different corner of the room. The The structure of his oeuvre is one of once directly from the performer and
replay is started so that the words space tangents to tangents to tangents that yet once from the loudspeaker; if they are
themselves evenly, at one-second have a way of interlocking on previous right on cue the amplification of the
intervals, clockwise round the room. At levels, that then take on still more sound through the loudspeaker is so
first the sound clings to the walls but as nuances of meaning. For most of the time great as to drown the original sound. As
the machines run out of phase the flow it is an art that operates in the margins of the microphone speeds up, the performers
of sound swirls around the ankles of the procedural error, colour generated out of are required to respond so quickly that
specta:or variously articulating the the optical instability of patterns of black any attempt at coordination becomes
geometry of the floor. and white, formal diversity in the futile. As concentration lapses, they are
Eventually, in February 1972, the accumulating irregularities of regimented left there applauding themselves (that,
four-letter word had its day: 'Fuck is a shape or sound. But for all the systemic after all, is what clapping indicates).
Gerald Ferguson, An Abridged Choral Reading of The Standard Corpus, 17 April, 1972

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