Internal Tantrum

Internal Tantrum

Charlemagne Palestine
1975, 7:35 min, b&w, sound

Description

In Internal Tantrum, Palestine sits before the camera with a severe expression of concentration, his body tense and his fists tightly wound. He begins to slowly chant and sway, evoking a powerful sense of grief and pain. He writes that the tape provides "a reading, like on the Richter Scale, of a certain kind of emotional internal roller coaster or earthquake. I used only one tone so the deliverance of energy becomes directly articulated in the sound." This performance is a simple yet intense rendering of pain, and the desire to move that pain outward from the internal.