This is the transcript of the audio description track for Dan Guthrie's work Rotting Figure. It was written by Soundscribe and Dan Guthrie to be a dialogue between an objective and a subjective audio describer to reflect the wide range of voices that have been involved in the ongoing conversations about the Blackboy Clock in Stroud.
The work is five minutes long and timecodes are displayed in the format mm:ss,msms, which is two-digit minutes, seconds, and milliseconds.
Installation view of Rotting Figure. Courtesy of Spike Island, Bristol. Photography by Rob Harris.
00:01,79 -> 00:35,74
Audio Describer: A black figure stands within a black rectangular alcove on a short black plinth. It’s wrapped down to its knees in a shiny black sheet that’s pulled taut over its head and a long thin tool in its hand which pokes up past the top left corner of the alcove. Red tape binds the figure's neck, waist and knees, only leaving its tar black legs exposed. Its short stature can be made out beneath the sheet which hangs in dense folds.
00:44,94 -> 00:50,52
Audio Describer: The figure starts to collapse. Its chest deflates inwards
00:53,04 -> 01:00,14
Artist: The racist figure starts to collapse. The painted detail is covered by the black sheet but trust me, it's doesn't look great under there
01:00,93 -> 01:04,52
Audio Describer: The head sags to the right
01:11,04 -> 01:20,09
Artist: The head sags to the right. We don’t know what’s causing this collapse, but we’re watching intently, peering into the darkness
01:45,36 -> 01:53,32
Audio Describer: The right arm caves in, the long thin tool poking up on the left slips down
01:57,12 -> 02:11,10
Artist: The long thin tool is actually a club. It slips down on the left. Maybe it's woodworm, maybe it’s solvents, who knows, who cares. It’s crumbling and we’re watching.
02:18,54 -> 02:23,52
Audio Describer: A chunk of hip breaks, the black sheet hangs limper
02:25,23 -> 02:31,23
Artist: Oh, that sheet really is hanging limper isn’t it. Serious damage going on there!
02:33,90 -> 02:38,14
Audio Describer: The figure crumples towards the plinth, losing shape
02:40,08 -> 02:46,18
Artist: It’s not looking like what it was, a figure with a club in it’s hand, not that it was really looking like anyone before
02:47,70 -> 02:53,77
Audio Describer: Folds of sheet sag as the figure fractures, head bent awkwardly but recognisable
02:56,13 -> 03:00,03
Artist: It feels unnatural watching the silhouette change, as these chunks break away.
03:02,07 -> 03:04,01
This black mass folding in on itself...
03:07,02 -> 03:16,06
Audio Describer: The mass folds inwards into a shrivelled heap, black as tar. The broken club sticks up in the centre. Some of the black sheet hangs over the plinth
03:19,06 -> 03:31,09
Artist: It’s an inevitable plunge towards the bottom isn’t it. If not now, this’ll happen soon enough. It was rotting in the seventies, rotting in the early noughties, we’re due another rot soon.
03:36,01 -> 03:40,05
Audio Describer: The club snaps. The mass sinks further down.
03:42,23 -> 03:51,22
Artist: There goes the club! The mass sinks further down. Can’t be much else left at this point, looks like this figure’s pretty much a goner by now.
04:05,01 -> 04:07,09
Artist: The mass sinks further down.
04:05,01 -> 04:07,09
Audio Describer [fainter]: The mass sinks further down
04:17,16 -> 04:38,04
Artist: All that’s left is a heap of black wooden chunks, black plastic wrap and red tape, piled up on the floor in this dark void. We’re basking in the aftermath of radical un-conservation, meaningful destruction, one less offensive object taking up space in the world
04:40,14 -> 04:44,14
Artist: It’s not real, but it feels good doesn’t it
04:50,00 -> 04:55,02
Artist: Audio description written and voiced by Dan Guthrie and Elaine Lillian Joseph
SoundScribe is a global majority collective of audio describers and consultants specialising in access for performance work, arts institutions and moving image. They offer an embodied and creative approach that resists the pressure to create de-personalised audio descriptions, re-centering marginalised voices through consultation and collaborations with blind and visually impaired creatives.
Dan Guthrie is an artist who often works with words and the moving image to explore representations and mis-representations of Black Britishness. His new body of work, Empty Alcove / Rotting Figure, is commissioned and produced by Spike Island and Chisenhale Gallery.