In Bob and Jill (Pt. 2), the relation between fact and fiction in the personal and popular narratives of everyday life is rendered in an assemblage of soap opera conventions, performance and documentary. Opening with on-screen text that relates “The Story So Far” (“Jill crashed the Volvo….”), Adams intercuts several parallel story lines. He assumes a fictional role to recount the personal histories of Bob and Jill. Bob is seen boiling an egg for breakfast, …
In Stories, Adams fuses storytelling and performance in a reverie on reality and fiction. The artist sits alone in near darkness while, in voiceover, he relates a series of seemingly autobiographical anecdotes — “inside information” marked by irony, loss and black humor. This stark interrogation of self is accompanied by evocative narrative signifiers: a ringing telephone, a ticking clock, a naked light bulb, flickering TV images of a porn movie. The ambiguity of his stories — …
Sensible Shoes is a witty collision of fiction and reality, ironically rendered as a multi-textual pastiche of mass media and personal narratives. Adams’ fragmented collage is structured on the stream-of-consciousness monologue of an unseen woman, who collapses fantasy and the everyday as she “zaps” the television dial and skims the newspaper. Seamlessly integrating her daydreams of romance with appropriated images of violence, love and consumerism from popular British TV programs and ads, Adams tells the story of how the mass media dictates the construction of personal narratives. …
Produced for a compilation video of 1 minute pieces by various artists called ‘Miniatures’. A lurid collage of images and text appropriated from the British mass media — TV news, tabloid headlines, advertising graphics — is accompanied by a narrator’s wryly delivered anecdote on the “non-event of the year.” Boy George, Royal Couples, political scandals and Halley’s Comet vie for the title in this vivid, 60-second media time capsule. – Electronic Arts Intermix
Piece written about John Adams and his video works for the Electronic Arts Intermix Catalogue pdf here. …
Continue reading “It Seems Strange But It’s Almost Dinner Time Margaret”
Installation version was entitled ‘Goldfish Memoirs and the Think Tank’
Time and Tide, The Tyne International Exhibition, Newcastle Upon Tyne 18th June – 5th September 1993 pdf here.
Time and Tide, The Tyne International Exhibition of Contemporary Art Catalogue 1993: Section of script from John Adams work Goldfish Memoirs & The Think Tank pdf here.
Introduction written by Tom Van Vliet for programme of the 12th World Wide Video Festival, …
Adams’ strategy of simultaneously constructing and deconstructing a narrative text finds its most accomplished expression in Intellectual Properties. Shot on 16mm film in Boston and Newcastle, England, this six-part fiction is an ironic, stylized discourse on representation, reproduction, production and reality. “The theme is power, as related to politics, economics, mass media, advertising, modern myth, art and business, money and personality; illustrated by means of jokes, stories and anecdotes, both autobiographical and observational,” writes Adams. …
In the coillection of the MOMA, New York …
Flier/poster, ‘Rotatory’, The Video Show, Serpentine Gallery, 1975. pdf here. …
