susan pui san lok
Faster, Higher
30 May – 31 August 2008
Faster, Higher is staged to coincide with the Beijing Olympics and act as an imaginative precursor to
London 2012.
Exploring the visual rhetoric of idealism, unity and aspiration, invoking both the Olympics as spectacle and movement and China’s parallel sports culture, this new commission revolves around material from the BFI National Archive and new footage shot on location in London.
Colour bars and video-graphic countdowns signal different ‘universal’ values and standards, implicating the entwined histories of the Olympics and the moving image, as well as the artist’s points of entry into the archive. The Olympic rings are echoed across multiple screens, through clocks, archers’ targets, lassoes and gymnasts’ hoops, while a series of sequences bring together images, sounds and gestures that may literally or poetically evoke the movement’s motto, citius, altius, fortius – faster, higher, stronger.
Commissioned by the BFI and Film and Video Umbrella.
Supported by Arts Council England.
BFI Southbank Gallery, BFI Southbank, London SE1
FREE admission
susan pui san lok in conversation with Elisabetta Fabrizi, BFI Head of Exhibitions
Tue 24 June 18:30 NFT3
Join Elisabetta Fabrizi for a guided tour of Faster, Higher
Sat 12 July 16:30 Gallery
FREE – booking recommended
