Profile With Pipe (music by Jem Finer)

An experiment with sound: This image is of a military man; we know because of the cap and the beard and the pipe. But also because of his fixed stare and rigid attitude; his profile is emblematic not just of him but of everything he stands for. He’s actually taken from a drawing made by the Italian Futurist Filipo Marinetti in 1918. Marinetti intended him as ridiculous even then but here he is made doubly so with the addition of a red nose that pulls itself forward and snaps back onto his face, over and over again as the animation loops on itself. His conflicted dignity and abjection, his comic militarism, is played out in the music, composed and performed by Jem Finer. You can hear allusions to the distant sound of martial music, the clanking of war machines, the melancholy notes of the battlefield, overlaid with the slapstick sound of the slow stretching out of his elasticated nose followed by it whizzing back at speed to slap onto his face. Original painting oil on canvas 2021, 17x14 inches. Music composed and performed by Jem Finer.