In a new video work, the ancient war trick of falling from the saddle pretending to die—a stunt that has become a staple of North American rodeo shows—is performed by a female professional trick rider, filmed close-up. The violent, yet mesmerising thrill of the scene interlaces with images of workers in Hazmat suits, frozen mid-task while cleaning an amusement shooting range, as well as found footage of U.S. Army soldiers jokingly posing in a so-called Mannequin Challenge, standing still mid-combat.

Dizzyingly, the camera circulates in these static scenes: a dangling female body, frozen sanitation workers, and motionless troopers. All are part of an entertainment industry where playing dead and playing with death coexist—where both the gun and the camera shoot. Meanwhile, the seamless, circular looping of the film keeps us captive in a suspended time that, contrary to the images’ immediate seductive quality, carries an imprint of maintenance, repetition, exhaustion, and a quieter, less spectacular, drag of death.

Like the film’s rerun, a series of photographs is reflected in the exhibition’s mirror-clad columns. The motifs—quoting the shooting ranges’ own promotional images on social media—zoom in on a cup of coffee and, adjacent, the visible edges of a gun, thus capturing a space where pastimes, pleasure, and the potential of violence exist side by side.