Linda Erceg, from PunchLine, 2003 |
Punch Line, exhibited this year in the Australian Centre for Photography’s Staring in the Dark exhibition, featured solo sexual performances from a number of characters underscored by a throbbing, repetitive electronic soundtrack and polyphonic recollections of dirty jokes and sex stories. The stories are at once wildly exaggerated and uncannily familiar, a tension echoed in the repetitive, mechanical yet strangely organic quality of Erceg’s animated figures. This schism echoes the simultaneous liminality and extreme banality of a modern sexuality, which is increasingly the product of a fast-paced, competitive technologically oriented culture. In a world where guilt-free satisfaction, or perhaps a simulated surrogate for sex, is only a URL away, with no inconvenient interaction, emotion, consequences or afterglow involved, Erceg’s work provides a means to consider how technology amplifies, distorts and attenuates our desires, leaving the viewer to ponder the meaning/aftermath of their encounter, after the screen goes blank.
RealTime issue #57 Oct-Nov 2003 pg. 9
© Jeff Khan; for permission to reproduce apply to [email protected]