Rewind

At first glance, audiences might perceive that Gabriella and Silvana Mangano's video work Rewind (2012) marks the very distinction between art and sport. Its austere mise-en-scene, revealing the influence of the Italian neo-realist films the sisters have admired from an early age, is diametrically opposed to the hyper-stimulation that contemporary audiences expect of a televised sports broadcast. Gabriella and Silvana strip away the background sponsorship slogans, logo saturated costumes, spotlights, scores and commentary. They extinguish the 'rules of the game' and its structure, and the element of contest considered fundamental to most sports. They substitute the public stadium with the private realm of their own studio, removing sport from the social arena. In Rewind the artists share the performance of a solitary athlete clad in plain black clothing. Wielding a sculptural cardboard prop, the figure repeatedly executes a single, controlled movement to the sound of the syncopated beat of an analogue flip clock. Following from their research into performance-enhancing music, Gabriella and Silvana have manipulated tempo in accordance with 'ideal' beats per minute for warm-up (108), stretching (98), strength training (118), endurance (153) and warm-down (88). By removing the theatrical conventions of contemporary sport and relocating a sporting performance to their studio space, Gabriella and Silvana are able to convey equivalences between artist and sportsperson: the demands of disciplined, repetitive practice, the coveted 'zone' of total mental focus, the psychological stamina required for success, and the aspiration, shared by the spectator, to excellence.