‘Stress and failure’: Matthew Barney on his film about the sports accident that traumatised America

The superstar of the avant garde has revisited a notorious football tackle that left one player paralysed. He talks about violence, ageing and how the US empire is in declineThere aren’t many people in the world who could produce a literal river of excrement and be hailed as a genius. But Matthew Barney, the 57-year-old US artist whose maximalist work often features sex, violence, testicles and shit, is one of them. The New York Times, back in 1999, called the sculptor, film-maker and perf