If it is true that the grid of "discipline" is everywhere becoming clearer and more
extensive, it is all the more urgent to discover how an entire society resists being
reduced to it.
- Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life

What is it about the protagonist of Brian Duggan's During the Meanwhile that makes him at once so freakishly out-of-the-ordinary and so disconcertingly familiar? Unquestionably, Duggan's character is at first sight an outright oddball: curiously attired in a white protective body suit he performs a series of outdoor tasks which appear designed to test or improve his physical capacities and in each instance his considerable determination is matched only by obvious exasperation at the limitations of his powers. The impression that this is an individual functioning at something of an angle to reality is, however, occasionally exacerbated by the manner of presentation of the scenes: in certain cases, the camera has been turned through 90 or even 180 degrees, thus transforming the frustrating results of our hero's efforts into something beyond the realms of physical probability. One such scene, for instance, features an inverted image of Duggan's character struggling to hang on to a raised horizontal bar - when finally his strength fails, the orientation of the camera allows his fall to earth to be read as a sudden flight upwards.

Such 'special effects' add a sense of the fantastical to the representation of this costumed character's eccentric performances - there are moments, perhaps, when we might imagine that we are watching an aspiring or wholly inadequate superhero in action - but there also remains something stubbornly grounded, even mundane, about these episodes. Despite their ludicrousness, these mini-dramas carry evocations of a recognisable and supposedly 'rational' material world within which individuals are not only constrained by their biology but defined by social, political and even spatial regulation. This is of course, partly a result of the character's chosen outfit: an all-white hooded body suit is in one sense enough of a 'blank space' to resist any strict categorisation, but certain associations remain unavoidable. We might, for instance, note the similarity to a painter-decorator's overalls, thereby linking or contrasting this individual's exhausting exercises with practices of everyday labour. Alternatively, this particular mode of dress may prompt images of more elite and possibly 'authoritarian' forms of professional expertise - the figure of the forensic scientist at the scene of a crime, perhaps, or some other such representative of a highly rationalised and efficient form of official analysis or organisation (the arrival of faceless white-suited scientists and military personnel in Stephen Spielberg's E.T. comes to mind, their presence signifying the inevitable intrusion of patriarchal authority into a fatherless domestic realm which has thus far been characterised by childhood 'wonder' and 'fantastical' possibility). In any case, it is worth considering the way in which associations of this character's distinctive apparel invariably involve varieties of professional endeavour since the actual activities shown in Duggan's work could be reasonably understood in relation to leisure.

This is, it seems, a vital thematic combination in During the Meanwhile insofar as Duggan's scenes of strenuous physical commitment (the effects of which are by turns ridiculous and grueling, humorous and horribly tense) seem to play on points of connection, or confusion, between the bourgeois categories of 'professional life' and 'leisure' - to the extent of refusing the separation of one from the other. Duggan makes a number of references in these short films to pursuits that we might easily associate with 'leisure'-related lifestyle choices but, as has been indicated, we see here arduous labour rather than pleasurable 'play'. In one scenario, for example, the setting is an isolated forest glade where, preposterously, we see this same solitary figure, clad as ever in his protective (and so ambiguously professional) outfit, pedaling industriously on an exercise bike. In another sequence, the drama involves what might be a version of the amateur occupation of rock climbing; this is, of course, a sport which involves considerable expertise and any amount of technical paraphernalia but here an attempt is made by our white-suited hero to scale a rock face without such accoutrements, his physical capacities inevitably falling some way short of what is required. For all its comic effects, this futile attempt to negotiate difficult terrain is presented less as a fulfilling use of leisure time than as a draining and humiliating chore. Such 'leisure' activity actually appears to bear the mark of the professional world that it is generally understood as being an alternative to. To use Jacques Derrida's terminology, 'leisure' here could be thought of not as an opposite to 'work' but as its supplement (the French 'Suppléer' also means substitute, replace), the idea being that our constructions of 'play' are contaminated by notions of 'work' - a Derridean metaphor which, we might frivolously note, is quite apt given Duggan's use of protective clothing. The word 'leisure', moreover, itself carries some sense of this complicating of cultural categories since its root is the Latin 'licere' meaning to 'be allowed', perhaps, therefore, implying a link to some form of controlling authority. (For Derrida, leisure is considered relevant in a different way in relation to the question of ethics - he views the process of weighing up 'impossible' choices as a matter of 'negotiation', the derivation of which is 'neg-otium' meaning 'not leisure'.)

Of course, the 'exercises' which feature in During the Meanwhile will not necessarily inspire thoughts of 'leisure' as such - some viewers may, for instance, find certain of these scenes disturbing in that they might also prompt alarming recollections of youthful 'physical education' classes. But associations of this kind (and any implied blurring of borders between official, professional spheres and a more 'personal' realm) do nevertheless suggest ways in which Duggan's work might allow for consideration of how diverse elements of everyday life are infiltrated by processes of discipline and regulation. The context of display of these films - at sites within the Irish Financial Services Centre in Dublin - is therefore significant since the chosen locations are ostensibly 'neutral' spaces: areas merely passed through on the way to or from the office. The presentation of Duggan's films here as large video projections, films which often involve a bizarre, off-kilter point of view and content that is simultaneously playful and stressful, therefore might feasibly occasion an intensification of those 'meanwhile' moments between the supposed poles of 'public' and 'private' life.

Declan Long © 2005.