On 12 August 1978, when artist Matthew Barney was 11 years old, he – and a million other spectators across the US – watched the live broadcast of a football game that would remain seared in the collective American memory. Jack Tatum, a defensive back for the Oakland Raiders, delivered an open-field hit on Darryl Stingley, a wide receiver for the New England Patriots. The impact left Stingley paralysed. Slow-motion replays of the collision were broadcast over and over again, imprinting on the viewers’ minds with a spectacle of violence and tragedy; the currency of shattered dreams and broken bodies.
