McCallum + Tarry

Endurance

In Endurance 26 homeless youths stand still looking directly into the camera for an hour without speaking. As each stands, the video is rendered with a time-lapsed effect in which traffic and pedestrians pass by and light fades into night and back again; during the transition from one youth/performer to the next, the video reverts into slow-time. The audio tracks on the video combine street sounds with edited sequences of the pre-recorded interviews. Every hour of real-time performance is compressed to 5 minutes, creating a finished work of two hours. Each youth who took part in this collective action dedicated their participation to the memory of friends who died from life on the streets, and thus “stood for” those individuals who were absent. This memorial gesture also serves as a quiet act of civil disobedience in opposition to the Seattle Civility Laws that make standing or sitting motionless a crime. A collaborative artist team since 1998, Bradley McCallum and Jacqueline Tarry have worked and exhibited globally, seeking to surface and discuss issues revolving around marginalized members of society. Their work, which moves fluidly between large-scale public projects, performative sculpture, painting, photography, video, and self-portraiture, challenges audiences to face issues of race and social justice in communities, history, and the family. Embedded within their work, whether it is of a historical, personal, or civic-based nature, is their ability to address the complicated and layered issues of race and power as a mixed-race artist collaborative.