Blood Sweat Tears, 3'30 excerpt (original 11'00)
Sport is a spectacle that serves the primary social function that theatre did in antiquity, collecting a city or nation within a shared experience. Accounts of heroism and sacrifice tell a story of the founding of the state, a narrative of glorious origin that often obscures trauma. The film Blood Sweat Tears (2019) focuses on this trauma (emotional, physical, historical) of the individual/collective body and the modern therapeutical processes (self-help group, massage, exercise) that have been used to help overcome such trauma. The work focuses specifically on what is exorcised from the body and mind, seeing the main character as someone who emits emotional (confessional and biographical) as well as physical (sweat and saliva) discharge.
The work Blood Sweat Tears (2019) is an artistic investigation into the cult of the disciplined athletic body in Soviet visual culture. A monumental soviet mural in the interior of the National University of Physical Education and Sport in Kyiv loosely influenced the fictional script and serves as the backdrop to the film.
Produced during SWAP: UK/Ukraine Residency Programme at Izolyatsia in Kyiv, Ukraine.