For his video Superhuman Factory Online [2000] Ian Haig shot footage of the Toba International Erotic Science Fiction Museum and the Grand Old International Adult Museum, both in Japan. The video is virtually static, a series of shots revealing mannequins apparently engaged in sexually depraved acts in sets reminiscent of low budget, 60’s era science fiction television. Inter-titles reveal details of the action: “Sexual co-workers go about their business with very pleasing result” and, later, another declaims: “Sexual biopods fulfill human promise…” Edited together to a gurgling soundtrack of electronic noises, Superhuman Factory Online is disturbingly funny, revealing a twisted fantasy of repressed sexual violence enacted in a pseudoscientific setting.
For Haig, this speculative notion of the human body in collision with invasive technologies and ideologies has been a constant throughout his video work. I Was Made for Loving You [2004] is a strobing catalogue of flesh-coloured plastic machines while Li Liberv rel reguli [2005] is a blast of animated horror that amps up the carnage and humour. How to Make a Monster [2005], with a single shot of a man removing a cleansing face mask, is somewhat atypical in Haig’s work, being both deliberately minimal and directly referential, emulating an almost identical shot from the film American Psycho [2000].
Haig has worked with installation and his gallery pieces such as Excelsior 3000 Bowel Technology Project [2001], Brain Tumour Helmets with Microwaves [2002] and Bimbo Laboratory [2005] trade in an ever-increasing theatrical maximalism. Dirt Factory [2005] was a gallery installation featuring dual video screens flashing slogans and strobing drawings, sculptural found objects encrusted with Corn Flakes and demented drawings on paper, explored the fanatical founding philosophy of the Kellogg’s empire.
- Writers:
- Andrew Frost
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- Status:
- moderator approved
