Title: Recital: Decoy (2019)
Artist: Johan Thom & Score by Wayne Binitie (UK)
Medium: High Definition Video loop
Dimensions: 3min 50 seconds
This work is an exploration of the pleasures, dangers and rituals that accompany sex. This is a loaded investigation given the extraordinary levels of violence against women in South Africa – arguably also the femicide capitol of the world.
In the work I am shown half dressed wearing a formal attire (a black jacket, a shirt and a bow-tie). I am holding a gilded decoy duck in my hands, shifting poses every few seconds and manually interacting with the material object in various ways. This also suggest a form of posturing perhaps such as accompany the various mating rituals the natural world over – including song, dancing and fighting among the males of the species.
The work hints at threat. My head is brutally cut-off by the framing of the camera shot, making me anonymous, unidentifiable. Of course a decoy duck is meant to lure birds closer to it in order to be shot and killed by hunters. I am not wearing trousers.
For the score I asked UK based sound-artist and pianist Wayne Binitie to rehearse on the piano without ever striking the notes. The result is an eerily haunting soundtrack that seems to sonically mirror the light-flooded, restrained atmosphere of the visuals. As individual notes accidentally sound the tension is momentarily broken. The screen repeatedly fades to black accentuating the measured tempo of the work, itself a metaphor for a ceaseless game of life and death.
