Barry W Hughes / Bahs
How to Remain Shallow
Mal De Salvo is the alter-ego, the dark side, the instinctive.
He lives, not in this reality, but in a constructed reality where the things that occur are spawned from an inner desire to deviate from the norm and to break free. He is the vehicle for that which creeps inside ones psychology and stirs inside ones personality.
Mal De Salvo is both the threat and the comfort in knowing that threat.
Mal De Salvo - Unwanted Guest
Digital image, 2006
Floor sequence from
Mal De Salvo - Misplaced Matter: floor/stairs/bath
Digital video 2004-2006
The initial motivation for this work came about after reading a statement by Sigmund Freud when he said that dirt is just matter in the wrong place. It was this rationalisation of the seemingly irrational that interested me, and led to the question of how could the same rationale be utilised when dealing with the human psyche. Indeed, when one considers the amount of psychological ‘dirt’ the average human gathers, one tries to understand its existence – how it came about and to what effect.
Mal De Salvo is a character caught up in this process of trying to free himself from his own psychological ‘dirt’, situated in mundane spaces he tries desperately to rationalise the irrational by performing certain acts. The disjointed time-space sequence, the claustrophobic sounds and locations, the colourless images and the use of everyday props evokes a kind of familiar inner turmoil being played out – a nightmare scenario.
Mal De Salvo - CSXPY
Digital video 2005 - 2006 (QuickTime movie - 8.9 mb)
In this video the Second Coming is performed from behind an armchair set in an average suburban sittingroom. Christ is risin and returns from the grave before a firey red curtain only to retreat once again in slow mysterious movement. The performance is accompanied by a disjointed digital soundtrack, in a further attempt to relocate the act to contemporary space and add an almost irreverent slant to traditional Christian choir and hymn. If this is the Second Coming of Christ, it is not the kind with angels singing of a new joy to the world: this is dark and disturbing, possibly an omen of the apocalypse.
