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Yank

Using four 100 ft 16mm rolls of motion picture film, this work sees four strong(wo)men take turns pulling a rope tied to a car carrying the camera, crew, gear, and lighting 100 ft toward them. 

As the strong(wo)man pulls, the camera gradually moves closer and the initial wide evolves into an intimate close-up. The 16mm film reel serves as both a technical limitation and a conceptual device, where its length becomes a direct measure of time and distance — a finite space that dictates the pace of the work. 

As the strong(wo)man pulls the camera towards them, the film crew and all the gear behind the camera are physically dragged along with it. This shared physical effort enables the strong(wo)man’s labor to directly mirror the movement of the camera and crew. The piece transforms the act of filmmaking into an experience of time, as the viewer witnesses the slow and inevitable progress of the camera towards the subject. The struggle to pull the camera creates a tension between the labour of creation and the relentless forward pull of time. By making this effort part of the work, this project transforms filmmaking into a performance, where the boundaries of the medium are made explicit and the act of production is just as important as the resulting image.

Yank was filmed entirely on location and edited in-camera, resulting in four unbroken takes that collectively collapse the roles of filmmaker, subject, and tool into a single, slow gesture.

Yank is currently on exhibition from June 2025 - October 2025 at the FluxusMuseum in Paros, Greece, as part of the Fluxus Prize for Experimental Video 2025.