The Delinquents videos
The Delinquents Part 1 (Jobseekers) from rage bank on Vimeo.
One minute excerpt from The Delinquents part 1 'Jobseekers' Duration 4.20 mins 2011
Part 1 Jobseekers
‘Jobseekers’ was made just before the 2011 sporadic August riots in London and was an outcome of investigations into ‘delinquent’ self destructive behavior, manifested through a systemic disenfranchised distance from society. I was looking for footage of looting and nihilistic behavior after reading the Situationist International response to the LA riots of 1965.
“Like the young delinquents of all the advanced countries, but more radically because they are part of a class without a future, a sector of the proletariat unable to believe in any significant chance of integration or promotion, the Los Angeles blacks take modern capitalist propaganda, its publicity of abundance, literally. They want to possess now all the objects shown and abstractly accessible, because they want to use them. In this way they are challenging their exchange-value, the commodity reality which molds them and marshals them to its own ends, and which has preselected everything.”
The Decline and Fall of the Spectacle-Commodity Economy
Situationist International 1965
I decided to use Tim Roth’s performance as skinhead ‘Trevor’ in Alan Clarkes 1980’s film' Made in Britain' for source material as it encapsulated a high octane, all consuming ‘delinquent’ nihilism aided by Clarke’s fly on the wall documentary style direction and his effective use of the steady cam to follow Trevor on his trail of wanton destruction against London inner-city society, touching on the frustrations of unemployment and the benefits system, authority figures and racial tensions. By situating myself within the film and through layered sampling, re- projection and physical screen manipulation I reinvigorate the original footage, resulting in a fragmentary abstracted regurgitation of Roth’s nihilistic gestures.