Wash Your Hands

Video projection

Duration: 5 min

 

 

Wash your Hands presents a simple narrative foregrounding a struggle between and an ‘I’ and a ‘you’, where a child-like character, the speaking 'I', attempts to subvert the authority of the character referred to as ‘you’ by resisting his or demand to wash his or her hands. The narrative is mainly carried forward by flashes of static text that articulates the dialogue and confrontation between the two characters. It is linear and sequential in format, and supported by the monotonous video footage of a running tap, a strangely fixed and solidified image that nevertheless connotes movement, continuity, and flow. Nevertheless, the typed ‘speech’ appears jerky, halted, and awkward, perhaps a reflection of the fraught nature of the dialogue.

 

Similar to other works such as Chance Encounter or Kiss Me, Wash your Hands highlights and enacts subtle games of power, aggression, and control that are fought within a domestic contexts, environments that are otherwise associated with intimacy and affection.