200 Mouths To Feed (1994)
By Claude Closky
Claude Closky, ‘200 Mouths To Feed,’ 1994, video presented on a monitor, silent, 5 minutes. Coproduction Centre pour l’Image Contemporaine (S-G,G), Geneva. Bodies, faces, lips, disembodied mouths, couples feeding each other and families at table. Swallowing, biting, drinking – chocolates, chewing gum, sandwiches, ice cream, hamburgers and various drinks. The human being is propelled into centre stage, viewed through a combination of gestures and looks: advertising works on bodies. Children, young people, old people, redheads, brunettes, blonds – so many ideas of beauty to the standards of television signifiers. A video that reflects the idealised image of the middle class in Western countries – a mass that lives well, that consumes; a succession of chromos of human lives. Glacial images that vaunt the warmth of a prosperous world, which encourages the spirit of covetousness and the thirst of ambition. The work is the result of three days of television programmes recorded continuously. From this, Claude Closky has taken only the sequences that involve the absorption of nourishment, a Perec-style survey where advertising has the starring role – that of offering images of peace and…
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