In Lars von Trier’s 2003 film The Five Obstructions, von Trier propositions Jørgen Leth, a friend, mentor and senior Danish filmmaker, to remake five versions of Leth’s 12 minute film The Perfect Human. Heralding The Perfect Human as his favourite film, von Trier sets five sets of constraints or obstructions for each re-make which Leth must observe. These obstructions are a means to hinder, fragment and sabotage the process, seeking to test the currency of both the filmmaker and the original film itself. While von Trier declares an unequivocal love for the film, he seeks to test his love by employing a series of demands towards what he calls the “little gem we are now going to ruin.'' However, von Trier’s provocations do little to curb the resilience of both The Perfect Human or it’s creator (or as the case may be re-creator) as despite the strange shackles von Trier casts upon each reincarnation, there remains a ‘trueness’ or inherent solidarity- the original retaining its dignity through each.

The Five Obstructions is a game that Danny Ford is happy to play alone with an encyclopedia of social, cultural and technological stimulants. Ford’s practice is an ongoing investigation of existing physical and metaphysical forms. Through his work, the artist employs the application of tactics and procedures to a seemingly unlimited spectrum of contemporary devices from the historical to the arbitrary and the analogue to the techno-dependant.

In an important video work by the artist, Untitled Silent Film, the iconic ‘portrait’ t-shirt of Kurt Cobain is wrapped around the faces of a sequence of sitters. As the video cuts between each isolated and sedentarily positioned masked figure, the viewer is enticed into a dreamy no-mans-land, where an awareness of the original article (Cobain) is strangely transposed upon another, and altogether anonymous vessel. While the tuggings of reality may suggest otherwise, the transference of characteristics, nostalgias and physical resonance from one entity to another become a legitimized outcome within the viewer’s experience.

As part of his installation at Artereal Gallery, Ford presents Three Eyed Tiger, an immersive screen environment where a looping soundtrack plays to a congruent series of subtitles written by the artist. The changing subtitles rest above a soundscape stationed somewhere between verses of psychedelic lyrics and zen philosophy. The sound and text frame a cascading of animated images of tigers rolling down the screen, shifting, turning and pulsing as they move across the visual plane to the echoing adages:

We bind like strands of a rope around the wrists of our enemies.

If not enforced, law is whimsy

Stops and starts with the bell

Three eyed tiger watches closely

Twice born and sired by the tiger

As the viewer watches the falling images, the small, jagged movements of the animations soon give way to other, less instantly noticeable defects; the pixilated edges or the occasionally crude proportions- attributes of the stock imagery that Ford has used as the basis for his hand drawn replicas. The artist here sifts objects of superfluous digital worth into a setting nestled amongst the hints of deity, where clip art dresses itself in the robes of shamanism.

Fords oeuvre of reconfiguring, re-contextualizing and re-enactment of his original subjects/objects offers questions on the reliability of both ‘face value’ and the existence of a historical canon in an age of digital action. However, by contrast and less cynically, Ford’s re-positionings act as a salute to the structural integrity of his ‘originals’- a retention of identity and relative truth under the duress of the rules, evaluations and obstructions instituted by the artist.

Danny Ford is a multidisciplinary artist working within the areas of painting, sculpture, sound and multi-media. Ford’s practice is an ongoing investigation of existing physical and metaphysical forms. Through his work, the artist employs the application of tactics and procedures to a seemingly unlimited spectrum of contemporary devices from the historical to the arbitrary and the analogue to the techno-dependant. His reconfiguring, re-contextualizing and re-enactment of his original subjects/objects offers questions on the reliability of the historical canon in an age of digital action.

Ford is currently undertaking his PhD at the College of Fine Arts, The University of NSW. His work has been exhibited in exhibitions nationally and in 2007 was awarded the Melville Haysom Memorial Art Scholarship Award and the Jean Clarice Searle Research Award.

Ford has founded and co-founded a number of community initiatives, including artist-run initiatives The Office, Tracer Projects and Stable Gallery. He is a director of the project-based record label The Last Record Label and ongoing experimental media group Eccs Benedigt, and his PhD project Cassette Project (cassetteproject.net) invites musicians and performers to participate in new forms of collaboration and reception.

DANNY FORD

Danny Ford_www.threeeyedtiger.org_2012