video performance – John Sturgeon

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World Image, Metzingen, Germany - 1998

InterAzoni, Teatro ARKA, Cagliari, Sardinia Italy - 1998

Shared Fear presents a teetering balance drawn from the anxiety of the Cold War and the often-frivolous manifestations of denial from that tension.  Video projection sets extremes for performance scenes in a cold war bunker, at an abandoned nuclear warhead arsenal in Germany, to a 8 mm film documenting an enthusiastic display of 1950’s family hula-hoop expertise.

 

Sturgeon recites the rules from the “Grammar of Shared Fear”.  Then alternately, he demonstrates the “duck and cover”, spouts dictums and threats from Cold War icons, and tops off the performance with gyrating dance, singing 50’s & 60’s slang.