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You could see this tape as a retro-game with an almost forgotten video vocabulary. In a style comparable with that of Ben D'Armagnac, or a Bruce Nauman in the early seventies, we see in a close-up (only this time in colour) the face of the maker which gets bound up with big rubber bands. His whole head is misshapen and mutated by these bands; they actually turn him into a different person. Self-mutilation as a means of expression is a strong, albeit somewhat limited instrument. But perhaps this tape isn't at all about the type of expressiveness that was shown in this vocabulary in the seventies. For, as the process with the rubber bands proceeds, a sound track starts which, in mantra-like cadences, seems whisperingly to snap at the rubber-band covered head: 'improve yourself, constrain yourself, help yourself, be yourself, express yourself ...' The voice is possibly a kind of super conscience that, already in advance, precludes any spontaneous, uninhibited expression.
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Willem van Weelden
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