Pester and Rossi ‘Mother Tongue’: Anarchist humour prompts considerations of the next step after Brexit.
Amidst all the excessive entertainment and festivities of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, there is a sober tone infiltrating the air. Everyone seems stunned by the recently broken news about our country’s collective decision to enforce Brexit. Meanwhile, Summerhall, famous for its eclectic performance programme, has been powering through with an array of theatre, visual art and everything in-between. Pester and Rossi conflate sculpture and theatre within their work, making them a worthy addition to this turbulent atmosphere.
The Glasgow-based duo describe themselves as ‘working with an anarchistic and feminist approach.’ To anyone unfamiliar with their work, the initial appearance of Mother Tongue may appear to not entirely fulfil this proclamation. To those with more familiarity, it may appear as a departure from their usual setup. Any echoes of their usual costumed street-protests, DIY workshops and overtly sexual symbolism are seemingly absent at first glance. It may drive one to wonder whether the exhibition will be an escapist distraction from the bleak situation unfolding outside. Moreover, the more literal political allusions associated with most activist-art are missing; the playful layout of the work suggests a calculated detachment from our sober reality. However as I become more immersed in this episode of the artists’ surreal world, the more politically-weighted the exhibition reveals itself to be.
Image: Mother Tongue, exhibition viewÂ
 Ruby Pester and Nadia Rossi met whilst studying Fine Art and Time Based Art at Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art in Dundee. Since graduating in 2008, they have worked as a collaborative unit on a variety of projects including workshops, prop commissions, live performances and sculptural installation. Their insatiable appetite for approaching different media provides a springboard for investigating social interaction and behaviour. Through appropriating language and physical actions into their work, they seek to challenge our conventional perceptions of reality.
The gallery named ‘The Room Under The Stairs’ provides a small yet appropriately named space for the body of work where notions of play and childhood nostalgia are inherent themes. Upon first glimpse the installation in its entirety comes across as scruffy. The industrial appearance of the bare brick walls and exposed pillars in the space effectively informs the makeshift aesthetic of the work. This secession from the clean gallery look supports their anarchistic aura. The room itself makes for a somewhat claustrophobic venture through the artists’ imagined world. Nevertheless, the notoriously adaptive duo claim the space through cramming it full of an agglomeration of sculptures, audio and projections. As you enter through the first door an enormous red plastic form (the ‘mother tongue,’ I presume) emerges from the other end, upon whose surface snipped rubber glove fingers are tackily glued. The execution of much of the work testifies to the amateur, hands-on nature of childhood craft. Audio of squelching and splashing spouts from small speakers; at first I think it’s all part of the immature essence, then I realise that I am entering a disembodied mouth with white sculptures resembling teeth clustered on the ground.
The video projection on the right shows the lively activity of the artists performing bizarre scenes in wearable sculptures. Within the video piece Soft Play (2016) I notice an uncomfortable tension between the rituality associated with improvised play and that of sexual foreplay. At one point in the video a large foam cylinder held in a restrained position projects out into an erect phallic form. The foam erection will be instantly recognisable as a light-hearted visual pun. The use of white and red PVC gain a new air of kinkiness. It all encapsulates a similar sexual innuendo to that pervading Herbert Read’s statement of intent for the ICA to become an ‘adult play centre’ in the 1960s. Mother Tongue embodies this awkward duality, which seems to align itself with the surrealist fascination with irrational combinations of imagery.
Altogether the emphasis on ephemerality within the show vibrantly exemplifies their validation of process over any finished product. The placing of the DIY-constructed objects next to the video piece creates a parallel of two alternative insights into process-based art-making: the former in the hand-made, and the latter, the use of the body as medium. The video switches abruptly between scenes so one only gets minimal insight into each colourful-block world. It is a suitable means for capturing their dynamism, though as with much performance art the impact of the videoed documentation falls slightly short of the exhilarating experience of live performance.
The sense of witnessing the aftermath of an event permeates the work. Towards the front of the room two red plastic sacks are slumped, one over a stool and another draped on the wall. They are costumes which have been worn by the artists in another performance. The line between sculpture and discarded performance-costume is blurred. Pester and Rossi’s use of props as costume render them non-precious, and are a denouncement of the traditional elevated medium. The way in which the artists repurpose work resonates with the Process Art of the 1960s, where artists like Eva Hesse incorporated non-traditional materials. Moreover, improvisation in the creation of Process Art was celebrated as a virtue. Yet the sporadic selection of music genres projecting from the headphones accompanying the video piece seems to obliterate any allusion to the heroic gesture idea.
Image: Soft Play, video still, 2016
There is still an ongoing predominant assumption that female artists’ work reflects their gender and eroticism. But Pester and Rossi manage to shift the focus away from these features associated with more autobiographical feminist art. Their attire is constituted of bulbous forms which resemble sexual body-parts. But the duo often perform with their faces (and most of their bodies) covered and Soft Play is no exception. As a result, the costumes offer an androgynous visual identity to the face of feminism. There is always a large garishly-coloured form covering the performer, so one cannot distinguish who is in the frame at any given moment. Perhaps they wish to appear as one person. This departure from the self-referential suggests a more general social engagement. As with many of the new generation of Glasgow-based performance artists, they look outside of themselves more than they look inwards.
The substantial red tongue is the climax of this ridiculing of bodily functions. At periodic intervals, unsuspecting spectators who dare to walk round the corridor are forced to scramble out as the floppy red fabric suddenly inflates into a taut, bulging form. It invades the majority of the available space with both its physical bulk and the audible roaring of the airflow motor. This experience is unexpected, yet utterly exhilarating. The artists themselves may be absent from the show, but their presence can still felt by the animation of this performative sculpture treading the line between theatre and sculpture. Performers become objects in Soft Play, objects become performers here.
The flatulent nature of the tongue embodies a similar level of time-based entertainment to the giant icebag created by Pop artist Claus Oldenburg (Icebag – Scale C, 1971). Yet the dictation of human movement through the invasion of an inflated object also brings to mind Steve Paxton’s inflatable tunnelled network (Physical Things, 1966). It seems like our disengaged observance of Pester and Rossi negotiating within environments in Soft Play has been reversed; it has now been inflicted upon us. They have imposed struggle on us through creating an antagonistic force. The tongue becomes much more sinister in its message. Regarding recent political developments, Pester and Rossi seem to be providing a commentary on our unstable perceptions of the space which we occupy. Negotiating our way within unfamiliar spaces carries resonances of current debates surrounding border limitations. It is a communication about the inevitable future instigated by divisions in our country, about the importance of placing ourselves in the shoes of others. Interactivity alludes to the crucial necessity for active engagement in change.
Pester and Rossi’s creation of an absurd world filled with fictional language and motifs are a provocation to make us consider our role in our own contemporary world.  It is only the beginning of a fragmented era following the initiation of our departure from the EU, and it feels more crucial than ever to find a universally comprehensible means of communication with each other. Performance artists are no longer simply called upon to respond to their surroundings, but must contribute to change through their art. Pester and Rossi pose no direct answers to these questions, but through employing ‘play’ they emphasise the need to heal social divisions through finding common ground. Consider the educational nature of their work in public spheres, the improvisational fervour of the costumes and actions, and the creation of an imagined world. Even though the work emits a shoddily home-made means of achieving this, it seems that there is something to learn from all this. Perhaps this way of engaging with an audience could be the answer to closer communal environments, both in the art world and society. Mother Tongue will inevitably feel lukewarm in comparison to Pester and Rossi’s more radical community work, particularly their participatory project I Spy With My Third Eye also on this month at CCA in Glasgow. Summerhall’s decision to place them in this tiny tunnelled room gives their installation the impression of a last-minute hanging by an artschool undergraduate. However the slightly subdued manner of this show should not be disheartening. As with their other projects, it is a snapshot into their practice, rather than a fully formed brainchild.
Pester and Rossi: Mother Tongue
Summerhall, Edinburgh
4 August - 30 September 2016