Tuesday, 31 May 2016

The Sound Projector: what's the point of Life of Barrymore?

Life of Barrymore receives a thoughtful review from Ed Pinsent in The Sound Projector blog here

In the review he writes:
Steven Ball may be asking pointed questions about celebrity and the media, or implying some critique in amongst all this, though I’m not sure if that is the point of the work. Personally I find celebrity culture banal, and shows like those of Jeremy Kyle and Matthew Wright to be extremely destructive and damaging to the national psyche. But I am being judgemental.
The question of the 'critique', intended or otherwise, that the work may or may not make, is a question that has exercised me in relation to this and other projects which have appropriated forms of articulated text as re-articulation. It is a question which I have attempted to address in various ways elsewhere, but prompted by Ed's speculation about the 'point' of the work, it is one that I hope to address soon, here.