GUILT STRIP
„GUILT STRIP — A History of Fear in Europe” Music video performance, 4 min 02 sec, 1920 x 1080, 2016. Contains a sample from „Stalker” as performed and written by Eastbank. This video is the second instalment of the series „Personal Service Announcement”. Recorded January 2016, at Konsepidemin, Gothenburg, Sweden. Premiered 4 March 2017 at FIST, Färgfabriken, Stockholm, Sweden © 2016 Bálint Rádóczy
Simple projected words in capital letters, referring to some of the taboos of todays western canon — combined with nudity and dancing as references of joy and freedom. The movie enjoys the built up contrast between our iconic fears — and the liberating dance. The duality of desire and reality, dreams and facts. Getting naked and dancing, while projecting words on my body is personal, political, queer, pop.
This trivial contrast is meant as a comment on the state of European individualism. Nobody’s really happy until everybody’s happy. The impulse and the intention behind GUILT STRIP was to make a simple and bold gesture of taking responsibility, of embracing our collective inhumane ugliness.
I am welfare fascism. I am colonisation. I am European superiority. I am a nationalism. I am racism. I am dictatorship disguised as democracy. I am red necks, neo-Nazi skinheads, I am ‘alt-right’ and middle class white liberals. I will not excuse myself saying “it wasn’t me”, it is useless to ignore, it is embedded in our subconscious, it’s written on our bodies.
In the context of contemporary art, the format is a response to its elitist, exclusivist bubble, its fundamentally capitalistic, exclusionary hierarchy, its tendencies of being incomprehensible, intangible. GUILT STRIP is, however, not so much of a critique, it is an offering of an alternative. I rebel against the art world’s obsession with elusiveness using these primal but functional tools. Higher art is not what we need. I strive for clarity and simplicity of expression, with the ambition of being intelligible and engaging on a broad human scale. I stand for relentless immediacy and disarming, passionate honesty in expression.
