This Is Not A Fucking Holiday, 2015HD Video installation, audio interview on 39 min loop, 3 videos on 10 min, 10 min & 20 min loops, painting airbrush acrylic on steel, timber, plywood, pigment 20 x 30 cm
This was an intensely personal portrait of a friend, the budding conspiracy theorist, apocalypse ‘prepper’ and circuit bender Lee Stowers. Lee has spent the last few years designing and making a wearable <> which, in his own words, is symbolic of the twin towers which collapsed during the 9/11 attacks in New York. When Lee dons his <> he becomes symbolic of the ‘Third Tower’ and Jacobs Ladder. Lee designed his <> to be a seductive tool to initiate conversations, symbolism and meaning hidden behind a party machine with speakers and scanning lights.
The three videos were filmed on the same day in Birmingham; one of Lee practising in his bunker style bedroom, the second of him down his local park, and the third during a sort of protest walk up and down Broad Street, Birmingham’s Saturday night drinking destination.
The centre of the work is an audio interview between myself and Lee during which he talks candidly about many subjects; Madonna as a satanist, the collapse of 21st century global capitalism, alienation and bullying suffered as a child, brain washing of the police the military and the masses, numerology and the Illuminati, conspiracy theories, the chequered floor and Kubrick's alledged involvement in the faking of the Moon Landing. In this short edit for my website Lee mainly talks about UFO’s and aliens.
The structure within which the video’s and audio can be seen and heard is based on Lee’s bedroom, which is an attic space at the top of a very steep flight of stairs, with a low ceiling clad entirely in soundproof foam. The outside of the structure was painted in a grey inspired by his wardrobe, and the small airbrush painting of fire on steel was inspired by our conversations.
The project was commissioned by Halle 14 - Centre for Contemporary Arts, Leipzig, DE
