IMAGES ON THE RUN
A
publicity shot for Angela's Ashes from last year: Frank and Malachy Jnr
are running down the centre of a greyish green Limerick street. Both are
drenched. The taller hunches his shoulders with cold while the smaller
ginger-haired boy tries to grab the sleeve of his big brother to keep up. The
dampness in the cobble-stone street visibly rots the buildings to either side
like a sunken ship.
An artist spends five months making a number of young people run, showing them
how to make the T-shirts and produce digital still and motion photographs.
After some neat passing outside the box,
Diego Maradona takes one step to the left of a Greek defender and curls the
ball into the top corner. He turns and starts to run towards the camera, a
white number 10 on the front of his purple top. He keeps running, leaving
teammates trailing in his wake. It's obvious something is different about his
face as he nears the lens. The cameraman doesn't back off. Maybe some viewers
do, just as they did when the first footage of a moving train was projected.
Running backwards. Running on stilts.
Running and somersaulting. It isn't a mindless or solitary act; thinking while
you run ... if I'm wearing an A and there's an R over to my left, then if I
move to the right, past the T, then we can spell....
In eight separate locations throughout
Newcastle, Gateshead and South Tyneside, one hundred young people produce
T-shirts spelling out GREAT NORTH RUN and run with them on, creating new words
as they change position. Wonder at their ease with digital photographic
equipment and wonder why they don't like running.
In 1979 Greil Marcus discusses the
frequency of the word 'survive' in pop music during the preceding decade. With
the act of running, up until the nineties there are numerous metaphorical uses
- born to run, running up that hill, band on the run, keep on running - which
leave interpretation open (running for freedom or as a challenge?). Since 1990
there have been far fewer. No distance left to run. Always on the run. The
doors are closing a little. Do the young people that grew up in the nineties
have any wider cultural experience of the act of running?
Six still frames from the young peoples'
video footage are enlarged to 48-sheet billboard format - split seconds, brief
moments that work as static images. Just picture an image of 40,000 runners
wearing similar T-shirts over thirteen miles.
Alan Dunn, October 2000