reviews chickS on SPeed
ChiCks on speed
Visitors (still), 2004, dir deborah Schamoni,
video, 26 min 11 sec. Produced by deitch
k ate m acgarry, london
Projects, new york. courtesy the artists and
kate macgarry, london
25 January – 17 february
In their video Wordy Rappinghood (2003), Chicks on Speed – the Berlin- comfort between provocateur and member of the public. They encounter
based all-girl collective – hold up a number of banners against themselves, little hostility as they roam around New York and are met mostly with
all the while energetically jumping around to a self-penned electro track. bemusement or indifference, despite pushing for some more dramatic
One of the chicks holds up a placard that reads ‘middle class white girls’. response. And because they refer superficially to the tactics of feminist
It makes for a self-deprecating admission of the pointlessness of their provocation from the 1960s and 70s, they question the very relevance of
anarchic performances and sets the tone for the rest of their gently satirical public confrontation as a tool for shocking and moving people. By enacting
work. the role of feminist collective, while simultaneously disarming their audience
Their show at Kate MacGarry includes six videos, of which Visitors with feigned ignorance of its traditions, they expose the humour inherent
(2004) is the longest. It also includes a giant beanbag in the shape of a hand in the idea that they – kooky middle-class white girls, after all, wearing
that serves as a seating area, a textile banner and several works on paper costumes that could have been found in a child’s dressing-up box – could
that bear imprints of breasts in bright colours, in a parody of Yves Klein’s pose a threat to anyone. They also question the status of nakedness as a
Anthropométries. (Klein’s paintings also feature in the video Extended ‘shocking’ condition; in Cutting the Edge, where they cavort naked on a
Paintbrush, 2007, where the girls move naked through a gallery.) Each roof, snarling and toting guitars (one member even fashions a dildo out of
video presents a different scenario, and new characters for the chicks to amplifier wires), their swagger is deliberately comic. Equally, in Extended
embody; in Visitors they are aliens from outer space, traversing New York Paintbrush, against the Yves Klein backdrop, the nakedness seems banal, as
City clothed in Day-Glo thrift-store attire; in Cutting the Edge (2006) they much a feature of the gallery space as white walls and canvas.
are musicians rocking out naked on a roof; and in Fashion Archive (2006) These videos provide a tender pastiche of the seriousness with
they are clotheshorses, trying on and taking off clothes at lightning speed. which feminist provocation was treated in its heyday, ultimately showing
The fun they have is infectious, reaching the audience as well the chicks’ relaxed attitude to agenda-less hedonistic activity (confirmed
as some of the unlikely collaborators in their videos, as in Visitors, where in their happy use of the formerly pejorative ‘chicks’). How they might be
their wild gesturing at commuters and dustbin men prompts these to viewed by the old feminist vanguard is questionable, but Chicks on Speed
join in. The humorous responses to their silly behaviour suggest a mutual navigate freedom in their own fun-filled way. Laura Allsop
Artreview 126
REVIEWS_April Part 1.indd 126 3/3/08 13:22:37
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