Larry Emdur’s Suit

2002 Video

‘Zile is chosen as a contestant on The Price is Right. He comes-on-down, gliding and shuffling. He shrugs, waves his hands, twitches and finishes up on stage, generating a series of movements that range in possible interpretation from ‘right on’ to ‘wow’ and then well beyond meaning. Host Larry Emdur can’t talk, he can only meet gesture with gesture, synching into Zile’s dance with a set of his own random movements—his ‘receptors’ forced to instantly accept Zile’s ‘language’ by TV’s imperative to keep moving seamlessly. Both works illustrate a fascination with body movement transformed for media consumption.’ – Urszula Dawkins Realtime Magazine 103. Sydney, Australia

“A detournement of a different kind is found in Australian Emile Zile’s video depicting the youthful artist’s 1997 appearance on the gameshow The Price is Right. In Larry Emdur’s Suit (2002), we see the artist cheekily mimicking the host’s plastic smile and enthusiastic gestures with boisterous, laugh-out-loud exaggeration. This intervention is belly-of-the-beast stuff, and though the footage has been circulating solidly since it was released, for me at least, it never ages.” – Danni Zuvela, OnScreen/Realtime, April-May 2008

“His video work Larry Emdur’s Suit is a classic. Finding himself a contestant on The Price is Right, Zile successfully guessed the price of the Nursery package and moved up to share the stage with host Larry Emdur. This is where Zile ‘performs’ himself in a bizarre series of hand gestures and contorted postures to which Emdur responds by mirroring. Zile effectively bends the materiality of television to his will, making Emdur follow his dance. It is hilarious and very, very strange.” – Linda Wallace, SCAN 2003 Realtime Magazine, Australia