Our piece for ‘a show, about the show’ with Scaffold Gallery in Manchester is coming along nicely, the final proposal is below.
William Cost and Millicent Place stir the art world this month with their new exhibition. Inspired by fictional depictions of anonymous worlds, this fresh take on traditional notions of art does not fail to disappoint. While focusing on the cultural practices that develop around unspecified activities, it attempts to make the things we see more mysterious and open to the interpretation of our own imaginations...
This is a brief introduction of an exhibition by William Cost and Millicent Place, two artists who previously had a two person show at Bank Studios & Gallery. Fiction plays a big part of our practice and twisting the current world into something that resembles its former self but causes a second glance is an aim for the things we construct. Our idea is to have a piece of left over wall text from a fictional exhibition of two fictional artists. We are painting a disparaged picture of a show that is never seen but its concepts and themes described.
The work’s value is in the individual’s ability to discover it, and to invest their energy in thinking about the work and add their own meaning to it all. It’s in the sector of knowledge, which is different, it’s accessibility is limited to those with an imagination. The time it takes for you to get the artwork and then the duration of time that the artwork stays with you after you’ve seen it are certainly linked. It’s about thinking about the idea of disclosure, and giving the spectator space to imagine their own thing, rather than giving them everything on a silver plate.
As part of Luke Willis Thompson’s exhibition at Chisenhale he introduced a screening of ‘Portrait of Jason’ by Shirley Clarke. Jason Holliday was a brilliant figure from the New York underground, rumoured to have sat for a Warhol screen test, which has since been lost. The film, shot on 16mm black and white film, is composed of non-linear takes, in which Holliday, prompted by the director, recounts and performs episodes of his life for the camera. In his introduction he spoke about the strength of the film embodied in Holliday who, despite being exposed to a sense of racism and homophobia from Clarke and her crew, has an ability to evade being fixed by the set-up in one particular rendering. The result is an ambiguous exchange, one which questions who is really being portrayed and who is being undone by this filmed situation. For the content it feels incredibly long but it is truly a disturbing but fascinating film.
Documenta has always appeared to be a highly political arts event and we were never sure if that was due to it being labelled as such or because all the work on show was overtly political. After actually being fortunate enough to visit this year we can confirm that it’s most certainly both; the overtly political works then give the other, perhaps at the point of inception, more apolitical ones a backdrop which cannot be ignored. As we were wading through more and more of this fairly heavy and at points depressing content it felt as if we were having the worst parts of our history thrown back in our faces, from wars to discriminatory acts to general insufferable behaviour. This idea was solidified by a line from Naeem Mohaiemen’s film ‘Two Meetings and a Funeral’; “a war against forgetting”. This film itself is excellent; a didactic, more-or-less chronological account of the ill-fated Non-Aligned Movement and a critical assessment of its failure is prescient in its analysis of how international relations fall apart.
Another thoughtful yet very slight work was Nasan Tur’s sound piece titled ‘Speech’. Once the headphones were on all you were exposed to was the gaps between the words in many speeches. Here we see one of the most powerful political vehicles, the speech, being reduced to its negative space. Perhaps the comment here is, what aren’t saying? What’s behind closed doors is mostly far more ominous than what’s on the surface.
Then we had Hans Eijkelboom’s notorious ‘Photo Notes’ series that’s been going for over 2 decades. The images on show are collated into groups of 12 or so and each image is a different person but is wearing almost identical clothing, whether it’s a rolling stones t-shirt or denim shorts and roller blades, he’s got them. His immense archive photographically records the dizzying clothing diversity that is such a defining hallmark of global capitalism, inevitably results in a document of arresting sameness.
An indirect, spatial intervention was constructed by Annie Vigier & Franck Apertet under the name ‘Scene a l’Italienne’. It was an artificial wooden incline which spanned nearly the entire room. Even though it could have gone unnoticed as an architectural feature of the building, it was in fact a re-creation of an Italian-style stage. Italian-style stage exploits the worldly idea of the exhibition site (gallery, exhibition space) as an artistic scene, a place where one shows oneself, a place where one is seen. Italian stage is not a performance or a scenography, it is an experience of the stage that properly puts space into play and provides a physical experience to the people who enter it, exhibits its content and its activity.
Thanassis Totsikas’s film ‘27th February’ was short by powerful in its imagery. We see an elderly man being transported on the back of a young man through a forest and along a mountainous border. Borders and intergenerational solidarity.
‘Crossroad, The crossroad where Oedipus killed Laius.A description and history of the journey from Thebes to Corinth, Delphi and the return to Thebes’ is the title of George Hadjimichalis work involving a series of photos of some sort of waste land and then that same environment revealed to be of Warhammer proportions. Some of the photographs are truly stunning and genuinely could be a bit of road bombed to pieces.
Another superb film to add to this list was ‘Walking Building’ by Andreas Angelidakis. Its subject is this hybrid hyperbuilding conceptually derived from an existing 1950s factory about to be converted into the National Museum of Contemporary Art. The factory communicates ideas about contemporary art that are rooted in the 1970s, while the city around it communicates with mobile phones.
More films – Roee Rosen’s work ‘Dust Channel’ is almost an opera (don’t quote us on that since we’re not opera experts) set in the domestic environment of an Israeli family, whose fear of dirt, dust, or any alien presence in their home takes the shape of a perverted devotion to home-cleaning appliances. A comparison is then drawn between dust and political refugees, like the dust, out of sight = out of mind.
As per we’re a sucker for work which blends into the gallery environment which is exactly what Postcommodity have done with ‘Blind / Curtain’ which they describe as a gift and blessing to the visitors of documenta14. The installation acts as a threshold for audiences to “cleanse themselves of the outside world, and prepare their hearts, minds and spirits for engaging the transformative experience of documenta14”. In this regard, ‘Blind / Curtain’ is a physical and conceptual threshold for demarcating outside and inside, and acknowledging and reifying the spaces and artworks of documenta14, as well as the spaces and contexts between. However, there’s another conceptual level to this because ‘Blind / Curtain’ is aware of itself as a node of power – it is a determiner of space – a border.
We’re only going to give Maria Eichhorn’s ‘Rose Valland Institute’ a brief intro since it’s probably better for you just to read about it >>>here<<<. But we will say if you’re interested in archive work around the appropriation and repatriation of books from individual and national libraries then give it a go, it’s amazing!
‘Whispering Campaign’ by Pope.L is another excellent yet less visible work in the form of a sound installation of whispers emitted through speaker systems, installed both in public spaces and on mobile maintenance trucks, disseminating their content throughout the streets and in restaurants, bars, shopping centres, public transit, and other spaces. Pope.L interviewed migrants in both Kassel and Athens and has weaved their stories together with local mythology, poetry, and rhythmic, non-narrative elements.
We’ve never Bill Viola’s ‘The Raft’ IRL so it was amazing to get to see it in such a great setting; big screen, comfy carpeted floor. The film shows a group of men and women from various ethnic and economic backgrounds waiting in line, but for what we do not know. Suddenly they are struck by a massive onslaught of water that knocks over some, as others brace themselves and fight for survival. Water flies everywhere, clothing and bodies are pummelled, faces and limbs contort in stress and agony against the cold, hard force. Then the water stops, leaving behind a band of suffering, bewildered, and battered individuals. It’s striking to say the least, especially due to the super slow-motion. This is because it reveals subtle nuances of the light and colour in the explosive impact of the water and the individual expressions and gestures of the figures in the face of an overwhelming assault. Another image of destruction to add to this list…
Finally we saw a film by the group Forensic Architects, ‘77sqm_9:26min’. It was re-investigating into the 2006 murder of Halit Yozgat by a member of a neo-nazi organisation. In particular, the work focuses on the presence of undercover secret service agent Andreas Temme at the crime scene (an internet café in Kassel) when the murder happened, as well as his contradictory testimony. The collective had the different scenarios re-enacted and examines the narrow timeline in which Yozgat was fatally shot. Aesthetically reducing to the clearest possible codes, ‘77sqm_9:26min’ may possibly be the most complex, accessible and ultimately most urgent work in the whole exhibition.
Chisenhale Gallery has another moving image work showing at the moment titled ‘Autoportrait’. The artist, Luke Willis Thompson, describes it as ‘sister’ film to Diamond Reynolds’ Facebook Live stream of the aftermath of her boyfriend Philando Castile’s fatal shooting by police officer Jeronimo Yanez. The film captures a personal tragedy but also, many argue, a social scandal: police brutality towards black people in the US. As you probably already know ten days ago, Yanez was found not guilty of manslaughter and other charges. The film in the gallery is quite the opposite; firstly, it’s on 35mm and features two static shots of Reynolds, one framing her head and upper body, the other a close up of her face. It’s black and white and silent. There’s an almost classical beauty about the first composition, a sculptural physicality; Reynolds looks off camera, still, before lowering her head to her chest in thought. In the second roll of film, she appears to sing, pray, or incant, gently and rhythmically moving her head. We’re not used to looking at strangers for long periods, but this film draws attention to fundamental things: breathing, just existing. We slightly struggle with the use of outdated technology due to there rarely being a valid reason for it. However, here there’s a thoughtful question of distribution; This is an image that cannot easily circulate or be manipulated online.
We managed to catch the opening of ‘Nature of the Hunt’ by Harman Bains at Auto Italia South East which was very striking. There was an incredible film at the back which was this crazy, disembodied survey of twentieth-century exploitation and body horror cinema. The full emotional spectrum was felt; at times when these female subjects are spoken about being dangerous to society, you’re amused but simultaneously shocked that anyone could ever believe such a statement. Paranoia, insatiability, jealousy, evil and hysteria are disruptive fictions that are presented as oppositional to the desired traits of being female, and obstinate to the globalised homogenous understanding of human culture. The female characters from this sub-genre of horror cinema – the vampire, the werewolf, the wife, the witch and the mother – are often used as markers to subvert the infrastructures of church, state and heteronormative socialities. No longer the victim but the perpetrator of violence, the monstrous female is a practitioner of alternate identities, systems and orders. This combined with Andy Holden’s ‘Laws of Motion in the Cartoon Landscape’ has caused us to revisit a previous idea, researching the use of art in film, that’s been put on ice for a while due to us not knowing how to approach it. We still don’t know how we’re going to go about it but these works have provided us with good ideas to consider; the first being to start with a set of rules or parameters to guide the research.
Very excited to have been able to see ‘Baby Driver’ earlier this week and we loved it! It flows beautifully from beginning to end with amazing music and brilliant choreography. On a purely technical note it’s one of the most amazing pieces of editing we have ever experienced. Not only is it for people who love music but there’s plenty of intense action sequences to keep you on your toes. However, we had a bit of an issue with Debora’s character being that she was quite underdeveloped and overly dependent. She’s basically a waitress who meets the protagonist, Baby, and falls in love almost instantly. But there’s very little back story to her character considering she’s essential to the storyline (something that could be overlooked as a homage to other classic American heist films but it doesn’t mean it feels right). She merely exists as a beautiful woman with no history, family or friends, and whose only goal in life is a road trip and is willing to risk her life for Baby despite only going on one real date with him. This doesn’t take away from the fact that the film is incredibly well made and tells its story very well but it does make you think. It’s similar to the issue ‘Nocturnal Animals’ had with Edward’s fiction positing a hateful alternate reality that is designed to shame and intimidate. His story, which the director Tom Ford places at the centre of a film, seems to be telling women, who are all essentially superficial (just like their mothers), stand by your man or else. We still thoroughly enjoyed both films and believe them to do what they do well but these ideas do still need to be questioned.
The images from ‘(TO THE HEART AND MIND) IGNORANCE IS KIND' are looking good and are now up on the website! Check the out >>>here<<<
Something that’s been getting on our nerves recently is the blatant patriotism in the American podcasts we like to listen to; Radio Lab, Freakonomics, This American Life and even Artsy are all waving the starry, striped flag. The first instance we were exposed to was the Freakonomics episode titled ‘No Tipping-Point’’ (listen >>>here<<<). They also did a previous episode on tipping titled ‘Should Tipping be Banned’ which was as always a very thought provoking and engaging listen. There was also It was looking at why we tip, which factors affect the amount, and whether tipping should perhaps be eliminated altogether. An obvious but particularly pertinent piece of research shows that African-American servers earn smaller tips than white servers, so there’s an argument to be made that the practice is discriminatory. Returning to ‘No Tipping-Point’, the episode was about a crazy restaurant owned by New York restaurant maverick Danny Meyer (I hope you’re reading this with a healthy scoop of sarcasm). In this restaurant he has eliminated tipping and instead has raised menu prices, and redistribute the extra money to the people who work in there. Sound familiar? Well that’s probably because that’s literally how the ENTIRE REST OF THE WORLD DO IT! They celebrate Meyer for being this forward thinking American genius for paying people properly instead of making them butter up customers to do it for him. To be fair to him, credit where credit’s due, this is a good thing for him to have done but there’s no mention of the fact that this isn’t a new thing. We lived in New York for nearly half a year and had to combat this issue constantly which is probably why it annoyed us so much.
Another example we wanted to bring up was Artsy. Voting for Brexit definitely didn’t do wonders for the art market but the way in which they would mention it felt as if you could barely hear them for how high up their horses were. It was as if good old America would never do something so stupid as to isolate themselves from trade, travel and all the other benefits of being a part of the EU. Their tune noticeably changed after the presidential election and suddenly it was much more sombre when politics came up and it felt well over due. Even someone as level headed as Philip DeFranco admitted that the viral video of a woman pissing on an American flag made him angry. Oscare Wilde said it best ‘patriotism is the virtue of the vicious’. However, we don’t want to be reductive, while there’s nothing inherently wrong with being a patriot, people sometimes abuse that notion, and use the banner of patriotism to justify some heinous things. People like to feel justified to the point of finding means to make it happen; I don’t know anyone who likes an unsettled conscience for long.
Before getting into the madness of attempting to recap on another incredible experience of the Venice Biennale, we got some images back from the exhibition in a bin! A new and fun premise with some bizarre documentation.
Venice Biennale was, as always, absolutely saturated with amazing work from all over the world. Some knowing art history references form Cody Choi, including a sculpture that has the shape of Rodin’s “The Thinker” but is made with pink liquid Pepto-Bismol and toilet paper, the two objects that represent his early cultural indigestion and are very much in line with his exploration into clashes between the Eastern and the Western worlds.
Mika Taanila’s project ‘Film Reader’ contains a series of prepared cinema books but instead of text editing, the artist has created a process parallel to traditional film editing, i.e. splicing. These books are works of moving image, quite literally: images are moved and taken out, erased, cut-out, transformed and discarded. Immaterial ideas of cinematic writing/reading transform into eerie cinematic collages.
Anne Imhof’s work in the German pavilion was a favourite of ours. A glass floor has been installed across the span of the pavilion, and for the first few minutes one is overcome by an unnerving feeling of vertigo. Underneath the glass, a series of objects are arranged in clusters: a leather mattress, cuffs, spoons, chains, and bottles of liquids of dubious nature. Imhof’s loyal crew of performers wear tattered sport clothes and dirty jeans, and can be found scattered across the space. The entire time, the performers move about. They stand on plinths, sing, dance, and then move into the claustrophobic spaces below the glass floor, where they engage in activities which range from looking sulky to checking their mobile phones. Then just as you’ve got used to them wondering through the space an industrial soundtrack explodes on the speakers, filling the room with metallic beats. The performers all come together in formation and walk across the room slowly, like an impossibly cool army of zombies. They reach the front end of the pavilion, where instead of a door, a glass window has been installed. Audience members that didn’t make it inside are piling up and squinting to see. Then, the group turns and walks back to the center of room, looking deadpan towards the viewers, who are photographing and videoing their every move, fascinated, despite the mildly threatening feeling these characters provoke. A truly chilling but enchanting experience.
Next up was Nathaniel Mellors and Erkka Nissinen who produced a hilarious film installation re-imagining Finnish society through the eyes of two messianic outsider figures, who offer a cosmic-comic perspective on Finnish creation mythology, contemporary Finnish society, and its possible futures.
Søren Engsted had a funny and intelligent film of a performance where he uses the technology seen in street magic to make the appearance of levitation. He then delivers a lecture on all types of levitation whilst in this position.
Taus Makhacheva’s film tightrope is another example of a beautifully presented metaphor only this time one involving balancing on a tightrope. It’s about the basic doubts an artist might have in making their own work, and the difficulty of trying to balance real-life responsibilities with an artistic practice.
As always, great to see Charles Atlas film featuring Lady Bunny. In ‘The Tyranny of Consciousness’ Lady Bunny reveals how she finally found a voice and managed to speak about politics only after growing up, and then talks about peace, life, our planet, greed and the confusing and complex times we are living in, all to a backdrop of 44 sunsets.
Another top moment was seeing Guan Xiao film titled ‘David’. We had never seen one of her films before so it was great to witness. Named for Michelangelo’s sculpture, it’s an absurdist commentary on the contemporary commercialisation of a centuries-old sculpture, including some amazing Chinese karaoke.
‘Living Dog Among Dead Lions’ was an installation by Vajiko Chachkhiani in the form of a small abandoned wooden hut, found in the Georgian countryside and reassembled on-site. Furniture, pictures, lights and other household items are the only occupants of the cabin. Then they simulated a never-ending rainstorm inside it by puncturing the ceiling with hundreds of holes and installing an irrigation system above. Water puddles on the floor and furniture, and trickles through cracks in the wood. The intention was that visitors can watch the interior decay and rot over the course of the biennale, while the exterior of the house will remain untouched, but this would have been more prominent if all the interior hadn’t been covered in plastic sheeting.
We had been looking forward to Rachel Maclean’s ‘Spite Your Face’ for quite some time and it did not fail to impress. The film takes in part of the narrative of Pinocchio and follows Pinocchio-like characters who encounter situations where a normal sense of what is true and what is false is confused, and so the viewer’s sense of what are lies and what are truths becomes confused as well. It’s clear that it’s a direct commentary on recent events, but there’s no Trump, or Theresa May, front and center beside the wooden boy. It’s more allusive; you can pick up on certain things or certain tropes in political characters. It’s much more thoughtful to have characters to feel a little bit more like an amalgam of different characters and different ideas, get the audience thinking.
Evan Penny’s ‘Ask Your Body’ exhibition was an amazing display of technical skill. However, we didn’t think the actual hyper-real sculptures were necessary, it felt a little gimmicky. However, the photography of them was amazing and felt more connected to how viewers might perceive their relationship with themselves and others.
‘The Imitation of Christ’ is a large scale project by Roberto Cuoghi in which Jesus after Jesus is cast by assistants working the moulds and kilns, before getting laid out on their backs by twos in little plastic bubbles. Then they are left to disintegrate until they have fallen apart, the body shattered into different parts – thus resembling the shrivelled-up relics that the crusaders set off after so long ago. It was quite a spectacle, and its byproducts quite gorgeous. Creating work about religion, and more specifically Christianity, is always a tricky one; so much has been done to investigate of the historical figure of the Christ. Yet Cuoghi has tapped into this very unexceptional fact that no one knows what he looked like, and that’s why you have 200 years of art history trying to depict him. The work is then showing the multiplication of his body as a man, and then nature comes in and alters it.
Another highlight was Andy Holden’s ‘Laws of Motion in the Cartoon Landscape’, something we’ve been looking forward to seeing for sometime and have soured the Internet for to no avail. The work comes in the form of a two channel film presenting a theory that the world is now a cartoon, and explores how an artist might operate in a landscape in which everything has been done, everything is equally possible, yet certain things endlessly reoccur. Taking ‘cartoon physics’ as its starting point, this dual-screen work, with artist appearing as narrator, via green-screen and as animated avatar, in the Cartoon Landscape, tells the history of the golden era of cartoons; interweaving quantum mechanics, philosophy, art history, and politics, to construct a set of Laws. The presentation mixes critical theory and conspiracy theory, oscillating between historical fact and bombastic speculation, each idea flowing into the next with the logic of a cartoon. Animated sequences sit alongside extracts from Stephen Hawkins, Greek philosophy, speculations on the 2008 financial crisis, Donald Trump, musings on the potentially animate nature of all matter, and the role of the artist in this post-human landscape. Even in the baking Summer heat we stuck it out till the end and we were rewarded.
Last but certainly not least was Damien Hirst’s ‘Treasures from the WRECK of the Unbelievable’. A site of total over indulgent excessive activity, which was incredibly entertaining and enjoyable. As you can probably tell it’s a complicated triumph. The labels for the works on display, dozens of objects, many enormous, depicting mythological beings – monsters, ancient royalty, maiden warriors, three-headed dogs, and suchlike – refer to them in a slightly puzzled or distant way as if only so much can be known. In other words, they’re like the labels in places at the British Museum, and the objects are like the antiquities you’d expect to find there. We are told that these ancient artworks were found lying at the bottom of the ocean after a ship carrying them, called the Unbelievable, sank, 2,000 years ago. This is untrue but it is true that works were sunk into the sea and then dragged up again and the operation recorded, just for the sake of the photos. This is only made more insane by the option of having a tour guide where the guide acts as if this is in fact true. As mentioned before the success is complicated; the objects remain aesthetically worthless but they’re needed for the concepts – after that they needn’t be looked at again. The true artwork was in the whole astonishing vision, the spectacle of a lifetime – his wondrous invented museum.
