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Lover's View Among the ideas explored in the work of collaborative artists Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard are authenticity, artifice, replication, stardom and fandom. Also up for debate is the meaning of a one-off live performance in a culture where events can be recorded live by the phone in your pocket. Previous work has focussed on music, including an extensively researched, move-for-move restaging of David Bowie's farewell performance as Ziggy Stardust, and a remake of a bootleg video of The Cramps' legendary performance in 1978 at Napa Mental Institute in California, complete with grainy black and white feel. For their latest work the artists have turned their attention to the artworld, with their 22-minute video, Walking After Acconci (Redirected Approaches). The source material here is performance artist Vito Acconci's seminal 1973 video Walk-Over (Indirect Approaches), but instead of simply replicating the work, Forsyth and Pollard have also updated it. In the black and white original, made when artists' video was still in its infancy, Acconci is seen pacing a corridor, every so often appearing up close on screen, talking directly to camera as he addresses an unseen ex-lover. In the new, colour version, Acconci's role is taken up by up-and-coming young East End MC and rap musician, Plan B. Having also collaborated on the script, Plan B appears as a cocky, urban youth, addressing the camera and by implication both his ex-lover and the viewer, with an analysis of their past relationship that is chillingly both complementary and consoling and cruel and taunting - "What we had was special, but what we had doesn't exist anymore. I'm with her now". Whether or not the viewer is familiar with the original work the effect is not only emotionally powerful, but the performance and language utterly convincing. Lover's View This article originally appeared in The Big Issue, 17th - 23rd October 2005
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