We’ve seen the current exhibition by Banu Cennetoğlu at Chisenhale Gallery recently and had a couple of thoughts about it. The premise is that it’s the artists entire digital archive of images and films from all her devices, over the past 12 years. This is then put into one huge moving image work; 128 hours long. The idea is this allows viewers to build up a picture of the artist; who they are through what the decide to document. A lovely idea, one which we’ve seen before from the likes of Eva and Franco Mattes who produced Riccardo Uncut, an uncut and uncensored portrait of someone's life through their phone. Although, we kind of prefer Eva and Franco Mattes’ version because it feels much less self-obsessed; they are thinking about it with reference to another person, completely estranged from them and therefore it brings up questions like “how do we construct our digital memory?” and “is there still such a thing as a ‘private photo?”. It’s about building a character and the fact that private photos aren’t necessarily sexual or explicit. But Banu Cennetoğlu’s show feels much more indulgent and dull. Although, neither of the outcomes of these ideas are particularly exciting; merely a slideshow of images and videos. Better of as ideas.
Went to see Incredibles 2 and it was even better of the first one. It’s so clever and beautiful and continues to build upon the question of are super heroes actually a good thing but does it in a different way to the first one. In the first film we saw the challenges of middle-age for Mr. Incredible but then he realises that normalcy can be great and family is worth the sacrifice. The major evils are bureaucracy.
Now we have superheroes are fighting back against them being illegal and we’re questioning whether the laws correct. Elastigirl engages in an act of civil disobedience by going back and doing superhero work, almost like a modern day Gandhi. The message then becomes, if you believe something is wrong then you are allowed to do something else wrong to change that wrong thing. The key is all about changing public perception of the superheroes which references the commercial world where if you come to a problem then all you have to do is re-brand. We see them operating in a post-truth world where there’s no good and bad, truth and lies but just what people believe. And in the end it’s another great message about parenting and how family is strong together. All summed up by a quote by Edna “done properly, parenting is a heroic act”.
