As nationalized performers, Olympic athletes have the potential to embody or reflect geopolitical tensions, creating surrogates through which to channel collective fears, anxieties, and celebrations in a hegemonic world order. Olympian downfalls are the most successful failures - incidents which point to the body as a failed machine. However, this failure is wrought with potential as a temporary disturbance. Within the Olympic Games, injuries briefly rupture the performance of a geopageant, relocalizing personal injury as a disruption to global spectacle; what is revealed is an imperial locus of superpower temporarily threatened by tragic reassertions of individual agency. These works are recreated from physical interventions of digital archive.
Header art by T. Guzzio. Original photo by Lucy Nicholson via REUTERS.
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Christopher Lineberry is a multidisciplinary research-based artist, born and raised in Greensboro, NC, where one of his grandfathers ran a funeral home and the other delivered babies. He is a recent graduate of Tufts University and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where he focused on video and installation, with concentrations in American and Cultural Studies. Lineberry has shown work nationally, internationally, and on the internet. Follow Christopher on Twitter and go to his website to learn more about his work.
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