Stick It

2014

5min

The single channel video STICK IT combines television footage of women's gymnastics with recordings of the artist attempting the same routines. Merging himself and the young gymnasts of the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta into one composite character, he enters an ambivalent position between envy, identification, rejection and critique of these highly controlled bodies and their restricted performative roles. The video follows the preparation and execution of a floor routine, suspending the marginal moment right before the action, encapsulating ambition, the pressure to succeed and the looming possibility of failure.