The Pact

The Pact
Erin Coates, 2017
2K video, with sound
7:20 minutes
Sound Composition: Cat Hope & Decibel

Coates has been consistently and uniquely making high quality video and installation works around the thematics of body horror and the performance of body control. Her body horror works are artistic rethinking of genre film as she extends moments of tension and examines the cultural factors around the spilling, uncontained and violated body. In distinction, her body control works are displays of containment and precision, of overcoming the natural and the built world through the practice of climbing. This work The pact, 2017, brings these threads together in a very clear and successful manner as the two climbers (one of which is Coates herself) negotiate a deep precipice via a complicated series of technical climbing manoeuvres and trusting teamwork. It is part horror film, part physical demonstration. ~ Robert Cook, Curator of Western Australian and Australian Art, AGWA

Commissioned by Decibel for the exhibition Sounding Art, held at PS Art Space in Fremantle in September 2017. Decibel performed live compositions during the opening weekend, scored for each commission in the exhibition. Read more here. Listen to the score for The Pact here. The Pact is in the Art Gallery of Western Australia Collection, the Murdoch University Art Collection adn the Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art.

The Pact explores elements of physical endurance and the bond between friends – two women rock climbers. It is set inside a dark space of indeterminable dimensions; the scale, movement and orientation of which are defined by the bodies of two climbers trapped within it. A tessellation of symmetrical patterns is formed; hanging from their arms, hooking their feet over the edges of the dark space, shifting in centrifugal movement, and using dual compression to suspend their bodies within the void. The extreme physical exertion of these actions is visible in the straining muscles and tension in the bodies, as sheets of blood fall through the space and a sense of abstract horror slowly rises. To endure the space and remain suspended within it, the figures are reliant on one another.

Climbers: Erin Coates, Shevaun Cooley
Camera & Colourist: Sohan Ariel Hayes
Gaffer: Dion Borrett
Editing: Erin Coates, Sohan Ariel Hayes
Set construction: Dave Brophy, Dan Bourke
Hairstylist: Jenny Reardon, Salon Mark ll
Costumes: Angela Ferolla
Location: filmed at Rockface Climbing Centre, Perth
Sound Composition: Cat Hope & Decibel
RED Camera: provided by Dingbat Digital Cinema Solutions