Something for Everyone
Richard Hoeck /John Miller
1999
color video with sound, 30 minutes
open edition
This work builds on the theme of John Miller and Richard Hoeck’s installation, „Delivery in the Rear“, namely a mannequin dressed in a UPS uniform. It extends the scenario into a 30-minute narrative. For this Miller and Hoeck chose conventional narrative cinematographiy instead of the Warholian conventions that dominate video art: real-time, static camera, etc. Even so, their narrative schema is minimal, appropriated from both the soft-core, „window-washer“ porn genre and the travelogue. As if to compensate for his low-level, dead-end job, each delivery seems to hold out the promise (or threat) of sex for the protagonist. Where pornography typically attempts to arouse viewers, „Something for Everyone“ instead shows frustration at every turn, offering pleasure only in storytelling and Schadenfreude. Against this, the artifice of overdetermined gender roles begins to stand out. Set in Vienna, the video also offers a stylized homage to the city´s working-class districts and a series of cameos from the denizens of its art scene.
