Refining the absurd, artist Angus H Braithwaite’s practice frequently transforms the performing body into a ludicrous actor. Failures of Aviation was a performance-lecture guided by physical props, which were ‘consumed by the work’ eventually becoming its memorial remnants.
Braithwaite expounded upon a history of failed aviation – from burning blimps and failed journeys to tragic calamities. Animating his factual accounts with reconstruction, farcical stagecraft and dry humor, the performance was both a clash and a parody of forms. ‘Sending-up’ the traditional lecture and, with it, genres of public entertainment such as slapstick, mime and ritual folk performance, this work contained a volatile mixture of instructive and destructive elements.