Some readers may not know of Andrew J. Paterson, which is a darned shame. His recent Pleasuredome video and performance night rocked the house. It was a live-action retrospective, in which Andy interspersed and overlapped seven live monologues (seven! with costume changes!) with video and super 8 film, dating from the early 80s to current works in progress.
Andy Paterson abhors the oversimplification of polarities, and the term "false binarism" is a favourite of his. Yet duality is a big feature in much of his work. A cultural bureaucrat named "A" discusses anarchy and other matters over the telephone with an identical cultural bureaucrat named "B" (both played by Andy, of course). Their argument is circular, but the circle doesn't close. By presenting two positions, Andy opens up the territory for many (maybe infinite?) points of view.
The cultural bureaucrats:
B: How can you honestly believe that anarchy is capitalism? How many anarchists do you know, on a conversational level?
A: Enough. Look, B, since capitalists would prefer that government play as minimal a role as possible with regards to private or "free" enterprise, and anarchists advocate the elimination of government, then anarchy would seem to be the ultimate extension of the free market principle.
B: If there's no government there can be no government regulation of free trade, right?
A: Precisely, B.
B: But the anarchists I know are socialists. They advocate the breakup of large nations into smaller intelligible and accountable units.
A: That's not anarchy, that's democracy!
B: But they don't believe in elections ..."
The cop:
"My job is to weed out illegal or underground economies, not only to stop them in process but also to prevent them from even being imagined. I am on duty to keep incompatible languages apart from one another. You cannot have incompatible languages competing for public space ..."
The driver:Andy Paterson's mind is complicated and sometimes hard to follow, but the man is a generous and charismatic entertainer, and the door to his ideas is pretty wide open. Summing up Andy's stories does them no justice, because it's their very layered interconnectedness that gives them clout. Pay attention, and you'll find yourself firing neurons you never knew you had. That said, I will try to name a few themes: exchange and commodity, public space, media and language, class and mobility, oppression, censorship, bad puns, mental illness, more bad puns, music, art, math, and history.
"Here in my car
we won't get very far
because I cannot drive
and neither can you
so there ..."
(sung to the tune of Gary Numan's "Cars")
For a recent online project by Andrew J. Paterson click here.
For videos and information look at VTape's excellent catalogue.
return to: sally mckay and lorna mills
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