Salty Banana
2012

Salty Banana is a remake of Mike Kelley's first video, The Banana Man, from 1983. Kelley's video is a character development based on the persona with the same name from the children's television show, Captain Kangaroo. Having never seen Banana Man, Kelley constructed this work on his friends' assurance that the entertainer pulled lots of things from his pockets and only uttered sounds like "ooooh". Kelley uses video here to portray an overarching psychology and to 'normalize' character within a sequence of actions. In my video, I use the original transcript as an anchor as I enact Mike Kelley performing the character Banana Man.

For this work, I'm looking at the role of the artist as persona and performer, literally and figuratively, in cultural and pedagogical production. While veering from the original, I propose a certain sentiment of its position in histories that are the histories of my work as a female artist and educator predominantly concerned with sculpture and its practices.

“Ooooooh”

Costume by Eli Borrowman
Video Assistance by Todd Matei
Assistance by Cori Williams
Actors: Curt Bozif, Cameron Crawford, Crystal Heiden, Joey Sheung, Jessie Mott and Tyler Myers 
Sound Recorded at Herald Arts