Lowest Expectations
Lowest Expectations was performed 'live' on the 26th of November 1996 in a basement space in Soho. As conceived by artist and 'lead vocalist' Angus Fairhurst, the stylish performance had all the trappings of a generic rock concert: a band with instruments and amps, a massive sound system, psychedelic lighting, giant video projections, a cramped space packed with hot and sweaty people and a bar. To further authenticate itself as a rock gig, the show was advertised in the music section of Time Out, where it was billed as a 'one night only' performance.
The evening began with the soundtrack to the ludicrously-titled film Free Willy blaring through the speakers as the audience shuffled into the space. Then, moments after the five member group (comprised of Fairhurst's artist friends) took the stage, it became evident that this was not a typical gig, because the band were not playing any music at all. All they 'played', with the exception of the finale, was pre-recorded: the guitars, drums and microphones they used were completely silent. Although the band looked, moved and (literally) sounded like any other rock group, this was a spectacle of posing and posturing (imagine the 70s performance-art band Nice Style meets the Velvet Underground). Fairhurst and his band mimed to sampled loops appropriated from various bands such as Supergrass, Manfred Mann's Earth Band, Gil Scott Heron and Pulp. (Fairhurst's band recently opened for Pulp at London's Brixton Academy.)
After the first sample was played, familiarity set in and we waited for the next progression or chorus to take over. But this didn't happen. By definition, a loop is destined to repeat itself endlessly. This breeds frustration: any ear desiring harmonic closure was held in suspension until the end of the 19 minute performance. As the show went on the music became louder and denser through a comprehensive stockpiling of one loop over another.
Behind the band, a double-screen video projection of Fairhurst's own computerised animations provided a visual correlation to the music. Through superimposition, the images progressed and repeated themselves in much the same fashion as the sound until the inherent logic of each loop went totally awry.
As a visual artist, Fairhurst is known for his adoption of the 'badly made and ill-fitting gorilla suit' as a comic cipher: the gorilla plays the insubordinate yet melancholic clown. Here, projected life-size on stage, the animated gorilla repeats various sets of actions: peeling away the skin of a naked man; dropping a man whose limp body falls off the bottom of the screen only to be caught again as he falls into the ape's arms from above; being cut up into cross sections, which exposes the animal's bones and viscera. The sections mutate to form horizontal patterned bars a visual notation of the musical score. (These serial patterns were developed into the paintings exhibited at White Cube in the concurrent show 'Low, Lower, Lowest'). In addition to the gorilla loops, we also saw gymnasts in mid-air flight, an animated set of false teeth, and a giant penis impersonating the performing whale from Free Willy.
By the end of the show it was nearly impossible to isolate a single sample from the whole: the music had become a deafening and relentless assault and half the audience had left. At this point, as he has done with each incarnation of the band, Fairhurst added a new element to the performance: live sound. For the finale, the 'special guest' actually played an electric guitar, or rather produced noise from it, as he was clearly lacking any 'traditional' musical skills whatsoever. But then again, that was the point: only the lowest of expectations.
What made the performance such a winning artistic conceit, as well as ribald entertainment, was its perverse conceptual agenda. The audio and video loops followed the same logic: they were both in a perpetual state of metamorphosis, paradoxically marking the passage of time and simultaneously suspending it. By putting art into a more mainstream format, Fairhurst successfully made the jump between high and low, conflating the ivory tower of the gallery space and the mosh pit of the concert venue.
