Phil Collins has titled this work after Horace McCoy’s 1935 novel and Sydney Pollack’s 1969 film adaptation "They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?", both of which portray the Depression-era craze of dance marathons. In early 2004 the artist went to Ramallah to stage his own dance marathon. After auditions, he selected nine Palestinian youths - Jasmin, Ziad, Sarah, Amal, Hussein, Mohammed, Maher, Noora, and Tamer - and recorded them in two separate groups over two days as they danced continuously for eight hours to a selection of songs chosen by Collins. The installation’s simulation of the dancers’ presence, combined with nightclub-level audio, encourages the viewer to identify bodily with the participants as they pass through states of enthusiasm, exhilaration, exhaustion, and sheer determination.
