Endurance

http://www.mccallumtarry.com/endurance/

Endurance is a civic performance that was created with twenty-six young people living on the streets of Seattle. The performance was then turned into a video that compresses the 25-hour action into a two-hour recording. In the DVD soundtrack, the youth share eloquent accounts of their experiences of drug dependency, difficult childhoods and street crimes.

Each person stood motionless on a Seattle public sidewalk for an hour -a significant act of endurance for youth who face drug addiction, attention deficit disorders, and drug-related health issues. But these young people dedicated their participation to the memory of friends, who died from life on the streets, and hence, ’stood for’ those individuals who were absent. The performance was also a quiet act of civil disobedience because standing motionless in public is defined as a crime, according to Seattle's Civility Laws.

In the DVD soundtrack, the pictured youth explain eloquently and often heartbreakingly their experiences with drug dependency, difficult childhoods and street crimes. Stark frontal portraits of the teenagers taken a few minutes before their performance redefine the notion of a film still. These images are both unflattering and seductive with rich detail and color saturation. The tough poses of the youth mask both their fear and their vulnerability.