(Originally published in: Parachute September/October/November 1982)

…Colin Campbell’s Dangling By Their Mouths (60 minutes 1981) is a prime example. As with all of his tapes since The Woman from Malibu series (1976), Campbell adapted the story from actual events and personalities, though this is no documentary. The tape opens with a lengthy monologue by Sean, an actor “between commitments” who tells us about his unnerving experiences in caring for the psychotic wife of a friend while the friend was at work; the story established Sean’s profession (for later reference) but more importantly sets a tone of muted horror and confusion through dealing with evidence of obsession and personality disorder that, while still operating more or less in the world, is nevertheless entirely out of control. The scene cuts to an artist’s studio as he prepares a final edit of a new video work, preparatory to engagements in Brussels; we see him next as he completes his presentation and asks for questions. It is slightly unnerving then to recognize in Anna, the composed and beautiful questioner who invites the artists (evidently intended to represent Campbell) for a drink, the person of Campbell himself: an elegant, assured, slightly older woman who seems to epitomize classic European awareness and sophistication. There are additional characters, for we meet Anna’s (female) lover, a young son, and find that Anna at some different point had met Sean in a bar in Brussels; we see the artist later disturbed at home by a distraught Anna phoning to ask why he has not answered her letters, and generally the plot tangles. In the end we understand the artist and Sean had both known Anna, and the tape ends just because they recognize their mutual acquaintance (and, probably, mutual lover) in a final tying-up of the many threads of the story. Throughout, however, Anna is unquestionably the main character of the piece, and her relating of the story of her lover’s death by cancer, the reading from her dead lover’s diary, and her demands for commitment and unquestioning concern specify Anna’s neurotic need for attention while underlining her glamorous “otherness.” Death and derangement are constantly at issue, subtle invaders. Yet the complexities of plot and the ghastly thematic undercurrents are softened and strengthened by the warm and rich colours throughout. Anna dresses only in black and white, but seems bathed in a rosy glow of soft make-up, light reflecting on wine glasses, muted backdrops (via rear-projected slides). Clothing and sets are subdued so that skin tones are livelier and more delicate; it is the interplay of these soft colors that increases the intimacy of glance and touch. With most of the action confined to speech, framing concentrates on faces and hands: mobile faces, expressive hands. Yet there is no sense of simply stringing together talking heads, for we are carried along by the intricacy of the story and its implications; this is Campbell’s first full-scripted work, and his attention to detail and timing focus our conscious attention on the text.

As with all of Campbell’s work, there is an important subtext as well: the centering and discussion of sexual politics. Campbell has assumed female personae previously in his videotapes (in The Woman from Malibu series (1976-77) and as a character named Robin in a group of works dating from 1978-80, Modern Love, Bad Girls and Peachland) but these roles are caricatures of contemporary sensibilities, immature female stunted by social pressures and assumed role-playing. Anna, however, is more ambiguous. She is represented as glamorous, worldly, quietly confident, and the fact that she has both male and female lovers is not even discussed. The artist in Dangling is also bisexual, but this hardly enters into their relationship, which founders instead on distance and impossible demands, the fact that they barely know each other. Indeed, their relationship itself is less at issue than the question of human interaction and generosity on a more general level, the destructiveness of isolation and an inability to share. The consumer society extends into private places.

It is the closeness of the view and the concentration on warm colours, textures and interior settings that make the piece as a whole so intimate, so revelatory. Campbell used Fresnel lights – small film spotlights – to locate each character in an illuminated pool while leaving the rest of the set more obscure, as a measure to give prominence to the projected background images, with the result that there are no harsh shadows separating the characters or elements of the set. And the camera used, a low-priced Panasonic ½ inch cassette colour model, has a low-saturation color level as well, which further enhances the overall softness and paleness of the images. These elements could be considered almost anti-technology, for they are operating at the lower end of possibility for the medium, but Campbell has been pleased with the relative ease of this mode of production and especially with the intimacy of the results. The complex story line and character play are then developed through a series of flashbacks, but overall editing is simple, and paced to the cinema rather than to television. We never feel hurried or swept forward by breathless events. The editing flow is much like that of Campbell’s earlier black and white works, but where the monochrome pieces had an overall elegance and sense of distance/outside view, the careful use of gentle light an rich colour in Dangling By Their Mouths makes this new work especially thoughtful and sensuous. We are charmed by its intimacy, and follow its development with an absorption normally reserved for reading: a private experience of fiction.

Campbell had avoided using colour until nearly 1980, though the equipment had been readily available for over five years…