Rugbylove x 4 is a four channel video installation with surround sound commissioned by the Museum of Contemporary Art in Cleveland. The viewer enters into a room with 16x20 ft video projections on each wall of women rugby players in extreme slow motion.The viewer has the experience of being in the “middle of the game”, as the larger than life players run towards the center of the field and tackles the viewer from all directions. The piece explores issues of gender, sexuality, aggression, vulnerability and loyalty, and ultimately is about the inspiring nature of these fearless women breaking down a myriad of boundaries and rediscovering their power. It explores the dichotomy of aggression/nurturing , destroyer/creator, connection to the shadow self or the underworld. Rugby, being such an extreme contact sport without padding, it enables these women to act out and experience real thresholds of fear, pain and joy that most people only experience in childbirth or war.
Rubylove x 4 (2007) Four channel video installation. 16mm film transfer to digital video. Directed, filmed and edited by Rian Brown Examines the exalted mental/physical state of women rugby players. It is motion study in its purest form, influenced by Muybridge and Edison’s pre-cinematic kinetoscopes. Brown spent one year playing women’s rugby, so that she could comprehend it physically and mentally. Shot with a 16mm film camera (Arriflex) at 60 frames per second in slow motion and projected the action on all four walls of a gallery.
Exhibited at the Cleveland Museum of Contemporary Art, 2007 in SIDE by SIDE