Running Man
I’m coming back to this blog about the Running Man theme, 14 years after I wrote it, because of the recent events that bring the hollow guy to mind. The new US President is threatening to annex Canada, as well as the Panama Canal, Greenland and a few other useful places. Instead of reforming an unworkable, unequal and unsustainable economic system, the US has chosen to step up extraction of wealth from other countries, such as ours. The image of Running Man has never been more apt, as he runs off with his briefcase full of ill-gotten gains.
I worked with the Running Man image exclusively from about 1997-2002. This series, using an image of a man running headlong into the future and oblivious to the past, explores the ideas and assumptions behind the corporate free-enterprise paradigm, consumerism and the impacts of these ideas on society, economy and environment. The Running Man image is also a vehicle to explore the inner workings of individuals who are pressured into participating in relationships of dominance and ruthless competition. These people are always in a hurry, rushing toward their own and the planet’s demise. They must avoid personal attachments that might jeopardize the struggle to get ahead, so personal relationships are neglected in favour of business acquaintances.
Running Man sometimes becomes aware of the emptiness of his inner life but the feeling soon passes as the strength of his ideological commitment to the accumulation of wealth reasserts itself. A wonderful French film in the Vancouver Film Festival called My Piece of the Pie depicts the character of Running Man. This film was especially powerful because it did not follow the usual Hollywood formula where the nasty, ruthless rich guy sees the light at the end of the movie and, through personal transformation, becomes more sensitive & caring. This film illustrated the reality of the right-wing corporate mind-set: they just don’t get it. No matter how clearly he is shown the evils and grief caused by a fundamentally unethical economic system, Running Man is just is too entrenched in his position to change it. From where Running Man sits, everything looks just fine and when he is exposed to criticism of his world, he can’t figure out what people are griping about. To him, self-interest is the basis of a divine plan for the creation & distribution of wealth. Those with the most self-interest create the most wealth and then this wealth will trickle down to the rest of us. If wealth doesn’t trickle down, but continues to float up, this is caused by a lack of gumption among the have-nots. He believes free-enterprise capitalism is an economic system perfectly aligned with natural human impulses, and those not benefiting are just too lazy to take advantage of its opportunities. Like the pre-revolutionary French aristocrats, Running Man lives in a hermetically sealed world, protected against morality, reality and empathy.
The Personal is Political
The series began as a personal catharsis for understanding men who flee attachment. But in the process, I became aware that I too was a running man, avoiding real life by chasing success and worldly concerns. As they say, artists always make self-portraits.The Running Man image first appeared in a series of oil paintings in 1997. Below is its first appearance as a painting/sculpture study of a potential clear sheet acrylic sculpture.
Though women can and do participate in institutions of dominance, Running Man remained gender-specific to reflect the predominantly male corporate culture.
Another very early Running Man study in oils, was again, a study for a sculpture. There is a figure in a business suit cut out of clear sheet acrylic and superimposed on a scene, in this case, a selection of homey items.
I began to make the connection between the problems that men face in relationships with the larger competitive, alienating, consumer culture. As my understanding of the scope of this series progressed, I began to cut figures of the man in the suit out of plywood, put a clear acrylic briefcase in his hands and set him up in 3D configurations. This business-suited figure represented discorporate man, optimizing capital and cutting losses. The 3D series went on to examine the larger influences that were breaking down family, community and society and became a larger critique of global capitalism and its impacts on the economy, society,and the environment.
Another Running Man painting/sculpture study from this period introduced the idea that later became the wooden sculpture All That Glisters (shown below) and finally the large steel sculpture Running Man installed in Kelowna BC (shown above).
The first sculptural piece in the Running Man series was called Special Cases (shown below) and it was an image about the exploitation of natural resources. The clear acrylic briefcases contain water, trees and fish, which are the big three resources of my home province of British Columbia. The piece illustrates that resources are extracted here, then processed elsewhere so that the value of resources does not benefit local economies. I exhibited this piece in 1999 in a sculpture exhibition at the University of Northern BC.
At the time, I had no capability for shipping transporting or installing sculptures, so I roped the plywood figures and the large wooden base to the top of my Ford Escort wagon and headed toward Prince George. Just before Hope I could see plywood figures sliding off the back of the car in my rear-view mirror, so I pulled off the highway and struggled to tie down my load. Somehow, I got to Prince George where I installed the piece, stayed for a couple of days with a kind friend, then headed home.
When I made Special Cases, I had a day job as a planner for the BC Agricultural Land Commission (ALC), and was sculpting on days off. The title of the piece, Special Cases was inspired by my work at the Commission and an earlier job with the BC Ministry of Environment . Both bureaucracies were charged with the responsibility of protecting natural resources, but in both jobs, senior bureaucrats and politicians would find ways to avoid carrying out their legislated duties.
A favourite method of weaseling out from under the requirement to protect agricultural, forests, water and other resources, is to class them as “Special Cases”. So for instance, though the ALC was mandated to preserve & protect agricultural lands, a category of lands would be classed as Special Cases so that they can be developed in a business-as-usual approach. So new highways, roads, pipelines, pumping stations and prospecting for gravel, oil or minerals could be approved without an application.
This is Running Man in his bureaucratic context – ensuring that the dominant paradigm, which is that economic demands must always take precedence over over social or ecological needs, prevails. Briefly stated, the dominant paradigm assumes: 1) the universe revolves around the economic needs of one species (human beings) rather than the needs of the other 1.7 million species; and 2) human beings have a God-given right to consume an unlimited amount of other species and natural ecosystems. This paradigm forms the basis of individual, corporate and government decision making in BC and throughout the world.
The next piece in the series was called Colour Theory and it examined the social impacts of unrestrained capitalism on the lives of workers and others. In this piece, Running Man comes in two sizes: large and powerful, and small and powerless, and expresses relations of dominance. Poorer males accept the domination of wealthy, powerful elites only because the system allows them to dominate females and those further down the economic ladder. The more rigid and repressive the power structure in a society, the greater is the need to encourage subjugation of one group by another. Otherwise, that large pool of disaffected males whose lives are getting harder each year, would turn on the ruling class.
The larger version is the man in the business suit, with a clear acrylic briefcase and a hole where his heart and should should be. His look is outdated because his character was formed in the 1940s and ‘50s when the current system began. In a world of diminishing natural capital Running Man must become increasingly fanatical in order to ignore the fact that the system is unsustainable.
In this piece, the briefcases contains smaller, less powerful naked running men, some of which are dismembered. They represent the social dislocation that occurs when workers are transients, chasing uncertain employment created by increasingly mobile capital. These smaller figures also appear in a sub-series on the theme of graffiti, discussed in another blog. The title Colour Theory also comments on the ways in which elites set various ethnic groups against each other in order to deflect attention away from the fact that the economic system does not serve the majority’s interests.
The third sculpture in this series of wood & sheet acrylic works is called All That Glisters (shown below). In this piece, the briefcases contain bright but worthless baubles, illustrating the distorted values of a corporate culture in which economic wealth is valued over ecological and social health. This piece served as a model for the monumental sculpture of Running Man that was created in & for the City of Kelowna in 2002.
I created a mock-up of the sculpture as it would look onsite. Here is one of the first images I sent to the City.
I used the above image of All That Glisters, placing it on a pedestal and photo-shopped it into the site. Originally, I had wanted to place the Running Men on a stack of coins & experimented with versions of a stack of coins as shown. The edge of each coin was to be ribbed like a real coin, but the cost of an 8′ pedestal of that diameter and the plasma cutting of the ribbing was prohibitive.
I soon realized that 3 parallel figures did not create a sufficiently stable form, so using cardboard models, I triangulated the figures as shown.
I also reduced the pedestal to one coin balanced on a column with CNC routered images of naked running men. The column referenced ancient columns that featured ancient Running Man successfully defeating his enemies.
Though I did as much work as possible myself, much of the fabrication was done at a fabrication facility called Monashee and other metal shops. Shown below are one of the figures freshly cut out of one 3/8″ sheet of mild steel 8′ x 24′ and being sand-blasted prior to painting..
After the symposium I wanted to experiment with concrete, especially casting in concrete. I cast 3 small running men using a rubber mold, (Smooth-On’s Brush-On 35) and a plaster mother mold to cast the three concrete guys for Off-Centre (below). The concrete mix I use for casting was just cement & sand (1:3) and water mixed 1:4 with white glue (Polyvinyl acetate). I got the steel flat stock machine rolled and hung a mossy rock from a steel chain.
Off-Centre depicts Running Man‘s world. The rock represents the earth and around it run the guys in suits. They see the earth as a small part of the economy, an “externality”. As it is external to the economy, it has unquantifiable economic value and therefore isn’t factored in as wealth. This is an inversion of the real world in which the economy is merely one activity by one species on the planet, which is entirely dependent on the earth’s ecosystems for its continuance.
Off-Centre was shown at Peace Arch Park which straddles the Canadian/US border. The rock originally hung from a single chain so that it dangled within the steel rim. But viewers swung the rock on the chain until it flew up and broke one of the figures. So a second chain was attached to prevent people from playing with the artwork. Mindless abuse such as this has had a profound effect on contemporary outdoor art. In order to withstand the rigours of public interaction, funding bodies favour stolid geometrical shapes designed to withstand oafs that climb on, swing from and have their pictures taken atop any and every artwork in the public realm. This is a far cry from earlier works that overcome the limitations of the material to create sweeping, swooping lines and delicate forms . Nothing can project from public art that will not be snapped off; no small part can be attached that will not be removed; and no paint, powder-coat or other effort to create a durable finish can survive being scuffed and scraped by shoes, pen-knives, stones, skateboards and anything else.
This phenomenon is discussed in more detail in another blog bu suffice it to say that most people have no respect for public art that is unlucky enough to be placed in their path. Everyone assumes that if something is not a sidewalk, a park bench or a fire hydrant, it must be a climbing apparatus. We in the West need to educate people not to abuse sculpture the same way that people have been coerced into not blowing smoke in the faces of fellow diners or not letting their doggies poop on the sidewalk. In Paris or Rome, every museum and art gallery had groups of school kids sitting in front of works of art learning that these things are an important part of their culture. As you tour the Tuileries Garden you do not see kids swinging off heroic outstretched arms or using urns as skateboard ramps.
Here in North America we accept that this is will happen and only permit idiot-proof works to be displayed. But even the sturdiest, most well-designed & fabricated work isn’t safe from the public. An example is a great sculpture called Olas de Viento or “Wind Waves” by Yvonne Domenge which sat overlooking the beach in Richmond’s Garry Point Park. When I last came across it there were several children climbing through the piece while their Mom attended to her cel phone. The kids were throwing rocks at the inner surfaces, which is clearly a common activity as the paint finish was chipping off in many places.
Though it is outdoors and relatively unprotected, Seattle’s Olympic Sculpture Park discourages vandalism of its priceless sculpture collection by unambiguous and continuous signage “Do Not Touch the Sculptures”. No namby-pamby “please do not climb on the sculptures for your own safety” here. So no one so much as steps off the foot paths for a closer look. Every sculpture everywhere should have such signage.
In addition to favouring bullet-proof public art, funding bodies are also reluctant to fund controversial art. Since Kelowna’s bold commissioning of Running Man for its downtown core, there have been no further Running Man commissions. Carved Bears, leaping fish, abstract forms and colourful banners abound and are not likely to generate outraged letters to the editor. And private commissions or purchases of anything in the Running Man series have been noticeably absent as well. Those who can afford to buy artworks (the big collectors in my town are property developers) don’t want artworks that challenge the status quo.
The last piece in the Running Man series was a maquette for a steel & resin screen called The Many Moods of Running Man. This would entail plasma-cutting running man figures out of 3/8″ steel then filling in the cut-outs with coloured sheet acrylic. I can see it now at a scale of 1:3 or maybe 1:4, astride a grand plaza with a water feature murmuring in the background and the sun casting colourful reflections of Running Man! Below is the maquette in wood and Mylar.
The piece is suggestive of the way corporatism co-opts spontaneous creative cultural products for its own purposes. So if, for instance, grass-roots organizations are successful in promoting human rights, ecological awareness or if an art movement or school arises that captures the public imagination, corporations are quick to co-opt this energy to their own ends. Thus the life in every worthwhile cultural development from rap to the “Green” movement is neutralized as a vehicle for profit.
This was the last piece in the series as I had to admit that buyers weren’t lining up to put a Running Man over the sofa. So for the next 5-6 years I worked on abstract sculptures, creating a two and three dimensional vocabulary of forms that were complete as discreet units and worked together as an overall theme. I also pushed the limits of my technical abilities to design and fabricate works in three dimensions.My thoughts on abstract art have been marshalled in another blog.
The Running Man series challenged the unspoken yet pervasive artistic convention that overtly political art is somehow diminished by its subject-matter. In many ways, I agree that art should operate on several fluidly interconnected levels, rather than be nailed in place. And no matter how strong a point of view an artist intends to project in a piece, viewers see it from their own perspective and interpret artworks in various ways. For instance, most people I spoke to about Running Man assumed it was an almost humorous depiction of how rushed and harried we all are, and didn’t connect it to any larger context. As I had put out a request for baubles, many citizens of Kelowna responded, creating a community connection to the piece.
But at a time in history like the present, when the political spectrum keeps moving farther & farther to the right, as an artist it is difficult to focus on creating new artworks. Yes, performances, galleries and books counter the violence and destruction that is taking place. But these can act as a counter-balance while at the same time trying to engender political awareness. This was the goal of Running Man.
