How does this relate to my own work? By switching the roles of the aggressor and the victim, Bruce Nauman is perhaps implying that there is no wrong or right, and that we merely take on roles in relation to each other. The work relies on the viewer watching different people move in and out of characters and this, combined with the slow motion alterations of the original footage, succeeds in ‘destroying’ the sense of the individual person and of right and wrong, to a confounding and unsettling effect. I have been trying to explore this idea of ‘moving in an out of character’ within my own work, as a way of attempting to discuss ideas of social performance. I liked the ‘bad acting’ effect of getting normal people to perform roles originally scripted for films, and watching them struggle to remember their lines or completely forgetting them, thus breaking the illusion of character.
Giulia's Art Kingdom 