Video still for Invisible Bullets PerformersPerformerPerformerPerformerPerformersPerformerPerformer Nick TandavanitjPerformerPerformers

A painstaking recreation of a murder lasting up to 12 hours.

Invisible Bullets is an installation/performance that was first performed in Hoxton, London in July 1994 as part of the Fete Worse Than Death. Commissioned by Joshua Compston of Factual Nonsense (but never paid for) the work was performed for two days alongside Leigh Bowery's Minty and The Raincoats.

Invisible Bullets

The work was subsequently shown in a pedestrian precinct in Nottingham and in a bank in Hildesheim in Germany. Looking at the obsession with crime reconstructions the piece features exploding bullet hits courtesy of a film special effects company.

Lasting up to 12 hours per day the piece re-enacts a murder again and again, each time changing the method of presentation: sometimes performed casually in balaclavas, at other times psychotically in underwear. Throughout a figure bearing a clipboard takes measurements and builds up graphs on the wall detailing the variations. A floor of sand and two video cameras record the movements of the participants.

Drawing on references ranging from O.J. Simpson’s glove to the transcript of a Mafia trial, Invisible Bullets is performed in an enclosed box which is 7m by 7m. The audience walk up onto a platform to look in on the performance.

The piece, which has six performers, features a commissioned soundtrack by Bristol-based dance band Statik Sound System.

A short video was made of the Hildesheim presentation and has been exhibited in galleries including the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin.

Tagged with
Related Content