FASTER, HIGHER
Faster, Higher (2008) is a multi-screen installation, commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella and BFI to coincide with the Beijing Olympics, which interweaves archive material with original footage shot near the London 2012 Olympic site. Originally staged at BFI Southbank, London, it was re-staged for Hit the Ground at the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle as part of the 2009 Great North Run Cultural Programme, accompanied by the launch of an eponymous publication.
Continuing ongoing interests in notions of nostalgia and aspiration, and the archival, this five-screen work includes montages of Olympic archive material and rarely-seen Chinese documentary footage spanning the last century. In light of China’s voluntary self-exclusion from the Olympics between 1948 and 1980, and the avowed apolitical idealism of the latter as a global brand, Faster, Higher seeks to suggest commonalities in visual and cultural rhetoric, and resonances between notions of nation and sport, patriotism and physical endeavour, opening with the rituals and symbols of national ceremony and international unity: flags jostling along a succession of parades, processions punctuated by the release of doves and balloons. Colour bars and countdowns signal a different ‘universal’ language, implicating the entwined histories of the Olympics and the moving image, as well as archival points of entry. The Olympic rings are echoed through clocks, archers’ targets, lassoes, and gymnasts’ hoops, while the ascent of pole-vaulters, mountaineers, balloons and lanterns invoke the movement’s motto: citius, altius, fortius. The work explores questions of spectacle and its construction, collective identity and solitary endeavour, featuring new footage shot on location in London. Young practitioners filmed at the East London Wushu Academy allude both to individual ambition and Beijing’s campaign to assign martial arts the status of Olympic sport, while the 2012 site is rendered paradoxically visible and invisible via its blue perimeter: a literal and metaphorical screen, barrier and defence, against which dreams may be projected, protests erased, and the labour behind the spectacle concealed.
Exhibitions
susan pui san lok, Faster, Higher, BFI Southbank, London, 29 May – 30 August 2008
Hit the Ground, Hatton Gallery, Newcastle, Great North Run Cultural Programme, 16 September – 15 November 2009
Publication
Nina Ernst & susan pui san lok eds, Faster, Higher (London: Film and Video Umbrella, 2009), 116pp, 243mm x 169mm, full colour, hardback box, ISBN 978-1-904270-29-4. Designed by marcandanna. Printed by Calverts. Above images © marcandanna 2009
Acknowledgements
Faster, Higher includes material which is © Olympic Television Archive Bureau (OTAB), © Leo Dickensen, © Jim Shum, and © ITN source. Special thanks to London Wushu Academy UK and London Chinatown Chinese Association
