Mannequin Death

Miller frequently uses mannequins in both sculptural installations and video art. For the artist, these human surrogates function as "empty subject positions" around which he can explore notions of subjectivity. Mannequin Death is a disturbing three-minute video made in collaboration with Austrian video artist Richard Hoeck. Set on an Alpine mountainside, mannequins clad in wigs and couture are pushed one after another off a cliff's edge and into a quarry by a mannequin hand that extends into the frame. Each meticulously styled figure comes apart as it bumps down the mountain crags, accompanied by violent thwacks and grunts appropriated from martial arts movies. At the conclusion, the camera peers down into the quarry and its pile of mangled mannequin parts--an ending that conjures images of mass violence in real life.

The viewer cannot help but feel the horror of each drop while simultaneously knowing the mannequins are not real. This vicarious experience of death from a distance is, of course, exactly the 18th century philosopher Immanuel Kant's conception of the Sublime--except filtered through what 20th century philosopher described as "the sex appeal of the inorganic" that structures consumer desire in capitalist society. Weaving together high and low references from the paintings of Caspar David Friedrich to the MTV show "Jackass", Miller and Hoeck create black comedy from the repressed impulses that course through contemporary culture.