One of Lange’s most emblematic series and widely exhibited, A Documentation of Bradford Working Life 1974 suggests the working body as a form of performance that resonates with expanding notions of sculpture. This is so, in Benjamin H.D. Buchloh’s words,
by situating the principle of sculptural production now in the very performative operations of labour and production at large as they occur at all times within the bodies of the labouring collective. So what had been the necessary, yet empty, bodily phenomenological exercises and task performances, for example in Bruce Nauman’s acting in the studio in 1968, now become the full and functional performances of the school teacher teaching a class of students, or the farm labourer scything or ploughing the earth in Spain.
Tate Film is pleased to screen this series in its entirety as a free programme. Guests may enter and exit the cinema as they please throughout the duration of the screening.
Darcy Lange A Documentation of Bradford Working Life, UK (The Fourth Situation: Grattan Ltd, a large mail order warehouse, 5th Study: Punch Card Operator—Janet Thornton) 1974, photographic still. Courtesy Govett-Brewster Art Gallery and Darcy Lange Estate
Programme
Darcy Lange, A Documentation of Bradford Working Life, UK 1974, ½ inch video transfer to digital, black and white, sound, 145 min
Conceived as a gallery installation, this series is made of three components: video (black and white, sound, 145 min), 16mm film (colour, silent, 15 min) and fifteen black and white photographs. Lange selected a cross-section of four factories in Bradford and recorded single studies of workers performing specific tasks. His use of the three media was deliberate; each study was videotaped for 10 minutes and filmed during the first 30 seconds and the last 30 seconds of the videotaped scene. The film and video components were shown alongside one photograph per study hung on the wall. This series was shown as a gallery installation as well as in screening programmes in institutions in Europe, the United States and New Zealand, including The Video Show at Serpentine Gallery, ICA in London, The Kitchen and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the biennales of Paris and Nice, and Bradford Industrial Museum which commissioned this work.
The First Situation. Osborne Steels Ltd., Low Moore, a steel melting works, 28 min
1st Study: ‘Rolling Mill’
2nd Study: ‘The Grinding’
3rd Study: ‘Furnaces’
The Second Situation: Whiteheads Woollen Mills, 33 min
1st Study: ‘French Combing’
2nd Study: ‘Traditional Combing’
3rd Study: ‘Spinning’
4th Study: ‘Spinning’
The Third Situation: Hepworth and Grandage Ltd, England’s largest producers of pistons and piston rings, 22 min
1st Study: ‘The Verson Press’
2nd Study: ‘Piston Inspection’
3rd Study: ‘Dual Lathes’
The Fourth Situation: Grattan Ltd, a large mail order warehouse, 61 min
1st Study: ‘Study of a Packer’
2nd Study: ‘Study of a Packer’
3rd Study: ‘Order Assembly’
4th Study: ‘Order Assembly’
5th Study: ‘Punch Card Operator’
Darcy Lange: Enduring Time is supported by LUMA Foundation and Govett-Brewster Art Gallery. All works in this programme courtesy Govett-Brewster Art Gallery from material preserved and made available by Ngā Taonga Sound & Vision.