Fascist in Love

Description:

While in residence at Western Front, Brice Canyon produced the single-channel video Fascist in Love. Two nude men appear unconscious in a dimly lit room: one slumped in a chair draped with blue fabric, surrounded by scattered magazines; the other collapsed beside a pint of beer, handwritten letters, and a framed portrait of a sailor propped on a table draped in red fabric. Above each man, a video monitor cycles through gay pornography (excerpts from Canyon's video Son of Fascist in Love) and footage of the room itself, effectively mirroring and fragmenting the scene that unfolds. 

Throughout Fascist in Love, the camera moves between tight close-ups of the men and various objects in the room, and a recurring static wide shot that re-establishes the full tableau. Between the drapery, reclining, nudes and soundtrack of Marin Marais’s “Sonniere de Sainte-Genviève du Mont de Paris” (1723), the scene carries a baroque sensibility, yet this grandeur is undercut by a feeling of despair and erotic stasis. The result is both opulent and pathetic—a still life in which desire loops endlessly, folding into apathy. 

Video documentation is available upon request.