Vent examines popular culture’s obsessive fascination with the excesses and indulgences of celebrity and the public’s willingness to consume, and participate in, the cruel spectacle of television talent shows. Combining traditions of cabaret with forms of presentation modeled on televisual spectacle, this video installation uses ventriloquism and impersonation to comically unravel the absurdly narcissistic and confessional nature of celebrity culture and highlight the inauthenticities of the entertainment industry.

Vent reflects on the extraordinary lives of TV celebrities, drawing upon aspects of their confessional interviews, which are presented in the form of a ventriloquist act, with the dummy being interviewed by the vent. The work takes us into the warped and skewed value systems of people detached from the everyday world, homing in on less savoury human qualities— vanity, greed, addiction, infidelity— evident in the very life stories that fuel both our and America’s ruthless and lurid media culture.