Bleed Bled Said

This book focuses on the Geczy / Parr work, Film Noir Politique Blanche. Russell Storer writes that the sequence of words in the title of this publication and essay, Bleed / Bled / Said, explicitly states the narrative impulse, and the temporal dimension, of Adam Geczy and Mike Parr’s collaborative project, Film Noir, Politique Blanche. The artist’s body, which is central to the practice of both artists, is located by the title both in the present and past. Geczy’s film of Parr’s 2002 endurance performance Malevitsch: A Political Arm, where Parr had his arm nailed to the wall at Artspace and remained there for two days, forms the core of the installation. The artist’s blood, be it the physical stuff or that of family, pulses through the work, but the terms bleed / bled also imply a flow outward, seeping beyond the edges and into other spaces. It is a visceral metaphor for the collaborative process, and for the ways that these two artists are attempting to rupture the forms of their own practice through an interrogation of each other, as well as of the contemporary cultural and political climate in Australia.