Franko B #3

A toast to 1977, refernces from the workshop to be made into a video, performance, thing, photograph, nasty intervention... this will be meaningless to everyone but the other participants.

This observation connects numerous references: the date of a Nan Goldin photograph, an observation of a prescribed time period, and therefore a timeline, the act of toasting an event, red wine and other liquids drunk during the three days of this workshop, and a reference to on and off, described in the given text and to the act of switching on and off the lights depending on what was being viewed on screen.

On and off/the screen gave rise also to the opening of the film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, which shows a dead body in flash photography accompanied by the burning out of the flash bulb, which is referenced in the text by mention of watching a scary movie. (Audio). I also wanted to use something which included Coca-Cola drunk by some of the participants and to a mention of Australia (where one of the group originates). Which led me to the post-apocalyptic narrative of Neville Shute’s motion picture On the Beach, which is set in Australia after a nuclear holocaust destroys the northern hemisphere before it too is destroyed by an impending nuclear winter, and were the survivors follow a cryptic morse code message, believing it to have come from a group of survivors, only to find it is being created by a bottle of Coca-Cola nudged by a breeze against a morse transmitter. The last message seen on the screen of this film is There is Still Time. Brother, seen by a line of survivors waiting to take a suicide liquid.

So , here’s to 1977. (everyone to take a drink)