Harrison & Wood

Video Performance artists Paul Harrison and Charles wood work from a small studio in the city of Bristol. Beginning in 1993 their peices have evolved from of dead pan performances in which bodies interacting with objects, physical environments and with one another. The First video shows sections for their work in the Tate collection entitles Twenty-six drawing and falling things from 2001.
In these works the preformers

physical properties, sometimes chaotic and others highly controlled and contrived where the outcome while seeming initially dangerous was entirely deterministic and thus safe. Pieces such as the tied chair thrown at woods and Harrison dropping a cinder block onto his feet whilst wearing steel cap boots are provocative and evoke a visceral flinching reaction from the audience, though no one was ever in danger of injury. However the rolling chairs work while more dangerius has less impact and more comedic value as there is a build up.

The second video found here is ther 2011 work 10x10'. and shows the evolution of the pairs work into a narrative driven piece. The 2 minute video opens with a painter in an office building looking at 10 colour samples on the white rear wall. Then the camera moves down through the floor seeming going down to the next level where the words "This is an imaginary room" projected onto the wall. The camera then continues to move down through successive rooms each with a different coloured rear wall. In each room the contents has changed, some are mundane, an empty office space others odder a heaped tower chairs or spiderman hoovering then to the second last room, a black rear wall and the smashing of a halogen light, then we return to the painter covering up a black large black section with white. My interpretation of the story is that each coloured sample represents an imagined possible reality for the room. The final scene eludes to the possibility the within the reality of the film that all of the scenes shown previous had indeed occurred and the transition through to floor was a transition through time.