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Action Hero – Watch Me Fall, Arnolfini
21st Feb 2009
On the morning after watching Watch Me Fall I wake and still feel something of that event with me, over me. Something about your grip has lingered. The epicness, the savagery, the dream like fantasy of it remains. Your hair, Gemma, coke stained and dishevelled, the sweat falling from James’ hair and face. The ordeal of it all.
It remains in my memory so visceral, like the pages of Rolling Stone or the pictures of some infamous rock gig.
These cold acts of care, the hug, the helping hand and then the sad and continuous kicking of the head. Gemma, the power and menace of your frilly dainty figure. An audience not knowing who to side with, feeling like you would both bite the hands that feed you and as you turn on each other you would turn on us.
We stood along that long stretch and enjoyed the use of that strip, up and down the runway, similar to a boxing ring on a fight night. How you invited a hesitant crowd to get ugly, to become a disturbance.
Your seduction of the crowd was not as subtle as I imagined your hype hyperbole in itself. You were not so likeable and I enjoyed your bravery over this. I was not sure whether I would root for you James, you thinly guised misogynist. And yet I did, as you kicked and pulled and tormented each other with such mutual complicity and a deep rooted sadness in your willing self exploitation.
We did root for you like a good and willing baying mob and you delivered your dare devil deeds, these small acts of glory and sacrifice and maybe this is why I awake with fragmented memory and unattributed guilt like the morning after the night before.
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