Deadline

1981, 3:53 min, color, sound

A running man, exhausted and near collapse, is superimposed over the enormous, disembodied red lips of a woman, who taunts and seduces him: "Come on, you can do it. Go a little further. Keep pushing. You've got to make it." Originally a multi-monitor installation, Deadline uses an economy of means to visualize the futile contemporary social struggle for promotion and power. Almy employs digital effects—posterization, mosaic, squeeze-zoom—in a bold visual articulation of these unattainable and abstract goals. This graphic, emblematic image of all-consuming desire—a man contained and diminished by the social imperative—ultimately appears over geometric grids, exposing the "deadline" as systematically and oppressively imposed.

Editors: Norm Levy, Bob Johns.