Learn Online
Learn Online
Tate
 

From Tarzan to Rambo - click to go back to introduction
4 November 2002 - 12 November 2003
From Tarzan to Rambo
About the artists
The Display
Points of View
Ways of looking
Buzzing Bird

This extract is taken from a transcript of an interview between Sonia Boyce and Emma Dexter

SB: With the From Tarzan to Rambo piece, there is a speech bubble in which what look like natives say, "THE BUZZING BIRD SENDS US A VICTIM" The speech is complete gobbledygook, and I suppose that one of the things I've realized since then, is that these black characters occupy a sort of almost underworld space - they are inarticulate and any forms of articulate speech come from white characters - the main characters. And then just to talk a bit about the Tarzan figure and the so called natives in the jungle - they were taken from jungle adventure comics from the 1940's, as a source material, to fit into these narratives and to have, in a way, some kind of relationship to photographic images of this female figure. As I mentioned before, the native's (I can't think of calling it anything else I'm afraid) speech bubble makes completely no sense.

ED: So, we've got jungle adventure story references and somebody saying something - is that constructed to make these people appear in a certain light?

SB: That comes directly from the comic in which it was used and, in its original context, there was basically an airplane in the sky and the natives called it a buzzing bird because, of course, they had no real relationship to the modern world.


Other Works in Focus: Pharmacy | Cold Dark Matter
Back to Tarzan to Rambo
Buzzing bird
Tarzan
Woman's face
Cartoon figures
About the artists