Muscle Milk @ Project Rooms

Rachel McLean and Diane Edwards’ video uses the format of an informercial. It advertises a protein supplement designed for bodybuilders called Muscle Milk. The product, we are told, is based on human milk, better at developing the kind of fat-muscled physique that weightlifters so desire, and leagues ahead of any wussy, straightforward cow’s milk. Several devices are employed to persuade us of Muscle Milk’s superiority: bright graphics, music, dancing and even an appearance by the big man himself, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

Schwarzenegger’s presence is acutely unsettling. Clearly a woman miming to Schwarzenegger’s words, we hear him talk about the pleasures of ‘the pump’, the satisfying sensation of blood rushing to the muscles when weight training. We watch as he pumps himself into rippling tumescence.

By his inclusion, Schwarzenegger references a string of Sci-Fi films, precursors of McLean and Edwards’ work. Think dystopian cultures overrun by corporations, saturated by garish advertisement. Think manipulated, posthuman bodies.

Visually outstanding, the video is slightly confusing in its intent. Muscle Milk is an actual product on the market and not a fiction. It, thankfully, and unlike the McLean and Edwards’ version, has nothing to do with human milk. Some, nonetheless, might still find it a peculiar product deserving of satirical assault. But the reality of the product may well soften McLean and Edwards’ satirical objective.

Muscle Milk is here employed as an attack on male vanity and notions of masculinity – successfully so. The installation is messy – deliberately, perhaps – with lopsided projections and an awkward use of what is admittedly a difficult space, jarring with the video’s otherwise slick finish. A joy to experience, the video might just embody its very own critique: like an advert it wows us with its visual vibrancy, luring us in to its dark irreality. Why it has done this, where clear with advertisement, is here slightly allusive.

Muscle Milk is a clever and sinister work well worth seeing. It’s just not apparent what exactly it sets out to do.