Video Descriptions #5: Trying on Wigs in Hell
Read the introduction to this set of texts and video description #1 here.
Trying on Wigs in Hell, 58 seconds
Reverb drenched muzak fades in over a background of fire and explosions and sparks. A title flies down from the top of the screen. It reads, ‘TRYING ON WIGS IN HELL’. From the bottom left, our performers spin up and round into shot, and from the right, a shiny, circular mirrored frame slides in behind them.
Tammy and Daniel are wearing wigs. Tammy wears a messy Andy Warhol style silver blonde bob/mop, and Daniel wears what may well be an actual mophead, but could pass as a blonde wig. Inside the mirrored frame plays video footage of a pair of tweezers pulling beard hairs out of a person’s face.
Tammy and Daniel stand still and face forward, looking blankly beyond the camera. Every ten seconds or so the wigs on their heads change. (It’s a short video, so it only happens four times.) Now Tammy has a brown bob; now Daniel’s head is topped by a big Georgian lady’s wig decorated with pearls; now Tammy is wearing the mop and Daniel’s eyes are covered by the Andy Warhol wig.
There is no playfulness in Tammy and Daniel’s performance (if standing still and looking blankly can be thought of as a performance), but the wigs ensure that they never look serious. They seem to endure the changing wigs, rather than indulging the possibilities for actions or characters or poses suggested by the wigs.
The footage playing in the mirrored frame behind the performers is handheld close up phone video of a pair of tweezers caressing the beard of a white skinned person’s face. The tweezers stroke and attend to the thick flat black hairs. Around halfway through the video the tweezers begin to pull hairs out. After pulling out a hair, they present it to the camera, and stroke the root on the person’s skin. The first time the tweezers stroke the pulled hair against the face, the root of the hair appears to be covered in dark black liquid.
Both the video in the mirrored frame and Tammy and Daniel’s performance feature different kinds of hair, but in the video the hairs are visibly connected to the person’s body through the skin, whereas the wigs on Tammy and Daniel’s heads are clearly not part of their bodies at all.