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Tuesday, October 22, 2013
Tuesday, October 22, 2013
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I love a film that stops and smells the roses. It's a hallmark of a confident, artistically minded director with the confidence to slow down and focus on atmosphere. I Wish is almost entirely devoted to contemplative rose-sniffing, Kore-eda proving himself a director supremely unconcerned with driving, propulsive plot and far more interested in domestic routines, minute details and tiny social interactions.
At the core of I Wish are Koichi (Koki Maeda) and Ryunosuke (Ohsiro Maeda), two young brothers separated by their parent's separation. Koichi lives with his till jocket mother in Kagoshima, a city in the shadow of an active volcano. Ryunosuke lives with his indie-rocker father in Fokuoko, living a slightly neglected, if relatively happy, vegetable-growing existence. Within Kagoshima, much talk is made of a new extension to the bullet train or Shinkansen that will pass through their town. Schoolyard legend says that if you travel to the point where the oncoming bullet trains pass each other, the force generated will grant wishes. So gathering up their friends the children calculate where the trains will meet and make plans to travel there to fulfil their wishes; in Koichi's case that his broken family be reunited; for others variously to resurrect their dead dog; to become a great artist; to succeed as an actor and so on.
These desires are granted their own little subplots, and quickly Kore-eda builds up a complex tapestry of domestic life in suburban Japan, a microcosmic world of little desires, worries, ambitions and routine. I Wish is all about the details of life, the film pausing to observe the children's routine of brushing up the volcanic ash that falls into their schoolyard, ordering octopus balls for lunch from a street vendor or showing us exactly how to make good karukan cake.
It's an unbashedly idyllic portrait of Japanese life, showing us a land of caring family units, sensitive teachers, close-knit friends and friendly welcoming strangers. I've never been to Japan, but I suspect that cosy, comforting picture that Kore-eda paints is just a bit idealised. It's telling that I viewed the film at a screening held by the Embassy of Japan in London. They're keen to increase tourism to Japan, with their current focus apparently being on promotion of the bullet train. With that motive in mind, it's slightly suspicious how positive I Wish is about the Shinkansen. It's surreal watching a film where a real-life mass transit system is romanticised to the point where it gains magical wish-granting powers. Then again the Shinkansen is a really neat train as far as trains go.
Kore-eda's Japan is pretty far from the stereotypical cinematic Japan of neon-drenched Shinjuku, Hello Kitty obsessed teenagers and giant robot animé. Paradoxically, even though this is a 'normal' low-key Japan the cultural differences in cultures are that much more striking. The biggest surprise is how blasé every adult in the film is about a group of young children disappearing for a day or two. Aided by a friendly school nurse and a knowing smile from the teacher they cut class and take an overnight trip to what seems like a very distant place.
The highlight is when, needing a place to stay for the night, the 8 children happen across a random elderly couple hanging up their washing. They take them into their house, feed them, wash them, give them a big cosy bed and drop them off in a field. It's difficult to imagine this sequence of events happening in Britain, to put it mildly. Here, the missing children would be splashed across the front pages of the newspapers, heat-vision helicopters dispatched, the elderly couple viewed with extreme suspicion and condemned for not alerting the police.
There's a good argument that Kore-eda has created a child's eye view of the world. Everything is tinged with a cute optimism, from the poppy and bouncy score to the dialogue, mining a nice vein of humour by having everyone talk at cross-purposes, the adults mainly existing in a kind of deadpan confusion at their children's behaviour. As the central characters, the Maeda brothers are utterly convincing: their conversations having a sparky, improvised air. But every performance in the film adds an individual touch of authenticity, every action borne of experience.
The finest moment of the film comes in an unexpectedly touching and intense montage when the trains pass that acts as a summation of all the tiny details Kore-eda wants us to think about. We see crisps lying at the bottom of an empty bag, a bicycle bell sitting on a counter, drawings of a volcano erupting, a sponge cake - all everyday objects - but by this point in the film, imbued with meaning and symbolism. A million tiny moments add up to a life. I Wish is nudges us to appreciate what's going on around us, warning that to only consider the bigger picture means you'll miss the beauty of life.
This movie starts out very slow and has a lot to keep track of. For the first 20 minutes or so I was a bit put off by this, but once you understand this tangle of interpersonal relationships, you empathise with them and laugh along with the gentle humour that suffuses their humdrum, yet important, existences. It feels slightly obvious to compare Kore-eda with the stately, deeply felt films of Yasujirō Ozu, but it's unavoidable, the film making me feel the same appreciation of family and friends as classics of Japanese cinema like Tokyo Story and An Autumn Afternoon.
★★★★
Thanks to the Embassy of Japan for the screening.
★★★★
Thanks to the Embassy of Japan for the screening.
Monday, October 21, 2013
Monday, October 21, 2013
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| Jane Bussmann |
Email londoncitynights@gmail.com with the subject heading "BONO & GELDOF ARE CUNTS" and your name to be in with a chance. Winners will be announced a few days before the competition.
Press release follows:
THE FIRST EVER ONE WORLD MEDIA FESTIVAL TO TAKE PLACE IN LONDON 8 & 9 NOVEMBER 2013 AT UCL
Today the One World Media Festival launches for the very first time and will take place on 8 & 9 November in association with Open City Docs at University College London (UCL). The festival builds on from the success of the annual One World Media Week and will host a two-day event with a diverse range of events for all those interested in media and its relation to human rights, development and international affairs. All events will take place at University College London and are free, however tickets are limited and must be booked in advance online.
With two full days of keynote presentations, industry panels, film screenings and networking opportunities, the festival provides a forum for conversations about the media’s portrayal of the Global South and how this impacts on international journalism and filmmaking today.
Guest speakers include: Binyavanga Wainaina, award-winning Kenyan journalist and author of satirical essay How to Write About Africa, Peter Barron, Google’s Director of Communications and Public Affairs; Mark Kaigwa, cutting-edge digital media consultant from Nairobi; Ben Sutherland, journalist, producer and blogger for the BBC’s World Have Your Say, among other filmmakers, journalists, digital gurus, and writers covering global stories.
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| Wadjda (which is brilliant btw) |
Alongside the sessions, the festival will also present a selection of films from around the world. On Friday, the film programme will explore approaches to representations of the Global South by both locals and western filmmakers. Highlights include Wadjda (dir. Haifa al-Mansour, 2012), the first-ever feature by a Saudi Arabian woman, and the country's official nomination for the 2014 Oscars, and TV Slum (dir. Angelo Loy, 2003), a participative project made with street kids in Nairobi.
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| Leave to Remain |
The second day will take a more in-depth look at asylum seekers, refugees and migrants and how the media represents the issue in Europe. Films include: Closed Sea (Mare Chiuso, dir. Andrea Segre, Stefano Liberti, 2012), a film about Libyan refugees trying to get to Italy, some filmed by the travellers on their mobile phones from the boat. In light of the recent tragedy off the coast of Italy where hundreds of Africans died while trying to reach Europe, this programme will throw much-needed light on some of the biggest issues facing the world today - the right of movement of people and the implications of European foreign policy. Also showing will be Leave to Remain (dir. Bruce Goodison, 2013), made with asylum seekers in East London.
The One World Media Festival’s exclusive closing event will feature a remarkable one-woman show “BONO & GELDOF ARE CUNTS”, a lighthearted look at foreign aid and who it really helps, from the acclaimed comedienne, comedy writer and author Jane Bussmann whose credits include: South Park, the Emmy-winning Smack The Pony, The Fast Show and Brass Eye.
Festival Director Mick Csáky says:
“Last year, thanks to the generosity of the Bertha Foundation, I had the good fortune to secure a grant to develop a long-held ambition to stimulate an active dialogue between media producers in both the Global North and the Global South. And now, just eighteen months later, we are launching the very first One World Media Festival with the central theme “Creating Global Conversations”. Having had the privilege of being a trustee of One World Media for many years, I am thrilled by this opportunity to stage the very first One World Media Festival in association with Open City Docs at University College London.”
As Mary Poppins famously sang: "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down". So it's appropriate that Saving Mr Banks is a sickly sweet sugary film, but it's not a spoonful that slides down, more great granulated gobs of the stuff pumped down our throats like force-fed foie-gras geese. I'm no enemy of sweetness, light and optimism but there are limits dammit. Especially when in this case, the glittering 'goodness' of the story is a whitewash for a rather depressing and sordid bit of creative prostitution.
Saving Mr Banks is ostensibly the story of how Disney's Mary Poppins made it to the screen. It takes the form of fuzzy biopic of Mary Poppins author P.L. Travers as she grapples with Disney creatives and struggles to retain control of her intellectual property. This isn't so much about the process of shooting Mary Poppins, but rather a dramatisation of script editing meetings and creative conferences. What it boils down to is the adversarial relationship between P.L. Travers (Emma Thompson), an uptight, emotionally repressed, archly stern English lady and Walt Disney (Tom Hanks), a cool, laid-back genius, friend to everyone he meets.
Disney wants the rights to Mary Poppins, we learn at the beginning of the film that Disney has been trying for 20 years to secure them, but Travers, who's fiercely protective of her creation, has repeatedly told them where to stick their cheque. This year things have changed, Travers is close to bankruptcy and faced with losing her beloved house. Feeling the pressure, she reluctantly agrees to meetings with Disney about a film adaptation. Travelling to L.A. she is horrified to discover that they plan to turn her book into an all-singing, all-dancing musical with animated penguins and Dick van Dyke as cheery cockney chimney sweep Bert. The rest of the film shows her being slowly won over by the Disney corporation until the glittering premiere where, obviously, Mary Poppins is a rousing success.
Interweaved are flashbacks to Travers' childhood in rural Australia, where we examine her relationship with her father, Travers Gof (Colin Farrell). These show us why Travers is so aloof and reserved, exploring the dark secrets that lie in her past and the real-life origins of Mary Poppins.
The critical problem with Saving Mr Banks is that its morally inverted, pushing us to identify with the powerful as they crush the weak - like rooting for Goliath over David. The film wants us to cheer on the Disney Corporation, their mission in the film an altruistic spreading of peace and love for all children by the seizure of intellectual properties from authors. Perhaps if this film wasn't made by Disney this would be a bit easier to swallow, but a film by Walt Disney productions that spends an inordinate amount of time fellating the frozen corpse of their founder leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
Adding insult to injury is the constant portrayal of Travers as behaving unreasonably in seeking total control of her intellectual property (something that seems a bit hypocritical given how viciously Disney protects its IP). Saving Mr Banks acts as though a story being adapted into a Disney film should be the ultimate ambition of any children's author, so Travers' fiercely independent creative vision becomes an obstacle to be demolished rather than something to be celebrated.
A personal annoyance in film criticism is people moaning that a film based on real events bends the truth to make a better story. Usually I couldn't give a toss, but Saving Mr Banks is an especially egregious example, transforming Travers, in real life an adventurous, mystical, openly bisexual badass into a stuffy old British stick in the mud. Sure she's grumpy and miserable, but considering she's having to betray her principles and selling off her IP I think that's perfectly understandable. The film even goes so far as to portray her as anti-feminist, something that really rankles when you know that Travers was vocally furious that the Disney film showed the suffragette Mrs Banks giving up her women's rights campaigning to become a happy housewife.
The hurdle that the film has to clear is that the real-life Travers absolutely detested the Disney adaptation of her work, going so far as stipulate in her last will and testament that no Americans (and the Sherman brothers specifically) were to be involved in any future Mary Poppins productions. Saving Mr Banks gets around this not inconsiderable problem by engaging in some pretty seedy historical revisionism. For example, it's true that Travers left the premiere of Mary Poppins in tears, in the film these are tears of cathartic joy, in reality they were tears of horror and shame at seeing her beloved work whored through Disney's very safe, very cosy and very fluffy lens.
I repeat that I don't usually care about movies warping reality if it's in service of drama. But Saving Mr Banks doesn't do it in service of drama, rather to create a hagiography of the Disney corporation, and Walt Disney in particular. Tom Hanks' Walt Disney is a non-character, doling out saccharine nuggets of wisdom to his goody two-shoes, vaguely cultish work-force. This is the idealised image of "Uncle Walt" that the Disney Corporation wants to promote, a saintlike genius loved by all, existing in a beatific state of flawlessness. Within this straitjacket Hanks barely has room to breathe, settling for a vague paternalism and homely monologues delivered in an accent that makes him sound peculiarly like Agent Smith from The Matrix.
The 1960s sequences of the film are at least visually interesting: a sanitised Mad Men pastiche for kids - the early 60s devoid of booze, cigarettes and sexism with nice retro wallpaper. Thompson and Hanks are at least professionals enough to get us through this morally questionable material with little fuss, squeezing the maximum humour from the ropey script. It's the Australian sequences where the film really falls flat on its face. Colin Farrell as Travers' father never feels remotely like a real person and the film rapidly devolves into sentimental, melodramatic, syrupy bullshit.
Disney's Mary Poppins is indisputably a classic. But here that's beside the point, Saving Mr Banks is a film that lionises a huge corporation exerting its full weight upon a financially vulnerable writer, taking a woman of intelligence, integrity and viciously exploiting her talents for financial gain and now in 2013 lying about how psychologically positive the experience was for her. If Travers was apoplectic about her creations being Disneyfied one can only imagine the reaction to her actual life receiving the same treatment. Saving Mr Banks is a perfect example of the old adage that history is written by the victors.
★
Saving Mr Banks is released on November 29th
Sunday, October 20, 2013
Sunday, October 20, 2013
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Nuns make great baddies. A scowling, pinched face peering out from the billowing black mass of their habits screams volumes about oppressive, cranked-up sexual-religious misery without a word being uttered. A sinister Mother Superior administering a crack of the whip and a thump on the knuckles can be as terrifying as any nightmare creature lurking in the shadows. Philomena has some outstandingly evil nuns; their scariness underlined by the fact that this is a true story.
Philomena tells the true story of Philomena Lee (Judi Dench). We first meet her as a giddy girl enjoying a funfair. She flirts with a boy, and soon the two are kissing passionately as a toffee apple falls to the floor. Cut to 9 months later and Philomena's pregnant belly. Being an unmarried teenage Mum in 1950s Ireland meant you were in for some astonishingly barbaric treatment. Philomena is imprisoned to a country convent and effectively enslaved for three years. After a traumatic, unanaesthetised breech birth she gives birth to a son, Anthony. He's kept in a nursery, the Church granting her contact with him for one hour a day. For her indecency Philomena is branded a moral degenerate: a wild slut, a dirty whore, a sexual harridan - beyond retribution, fallen and rotten to the core.
But these religious eyes have greed glinting within, they have full control of a precious resource - babies. So, any Catholic that stumps up a fat wodge of cash can buy a baby, carting it off around the world into a new life - the traumatised birth mother left behind for a lifetime of guilt, grief and Church-imposed shame. And so Baby Anthony is parcelled off to parts unknown, leaving Philomena racked with misery in her old age, tortured by thoughts of how her baby's life turned out. He could have been shot to bits in Vietnam or be a homeless man lying in a cold alley, unloved, desperate and dying, a life lived without knowing that there was somebody out there that loved him.
Landing square in the middle of this misery is Martin Sixsmith (Steve Coogan). He's a disgraced spin doctor, sacked from government for "something he didn't even say". He wants to head back into the world of writing and has vague, directionless plans to publish a book about Russian history. He's aloof and rather snooty, the epitome of the urbane metropolitan intellectual. Human interest stories are beneath him, thought of as syrupy sweet grief porn devoid of substance. Even so, he's in need of a project, so with a vague embarrassment he begins to work with Philomena, the two setting out to find out exactly what happened in the Magdalene asylum and whatever became of baby Anthony.
I've got to admit, I shared Sixsmith's reservations about this material, it sounded a bit glurgish; achingly worthy material that should be issued with pre-moistened hankies. Thankfully, Frears consciously elevates the material above weeper-of-the-week rainy day material with an iron grip on his message and a slow-burning white-hot anger at the crimes committed by the Catholic Church.
It probably goes without saying, but Judi Dench gives a top-notch performance, effortlessly surmounting every emotional peak -nakedly emotional and reflexively honest. Throughout the film Philomena both confounds and confirms our stereotypes of what a little old Irish lady should be like - one moment launching into a headache inducingly dull description of the ins and outs of a Mills and Boon romance novel and the other displaying an unexpected frankness when talking about sex. In practically every scene Dench pulls something out of her hat to surprise us, moving the character way past simple, wounded martyrdom and into a likeable, intelligent and unshakably moral pillar.
Though Philomena is the centre of the film, it wouldn't work without Coogan's excellent Sixsmith, who functions as a subtle straight-man to Dench and the mouthpiece for the audience's thoughts. Coogan has had a busy year in film, going from broad comedy in Alpha Papa to sleazy 70s pornography in The Look of Love and finally a crusading yet cynical journalist here. Though I loved Alpha Papa, his turn in Philomena is the best straight performance I've ever seen from Coogan. His usual tendency is play slightly veiled versions of himself, but here he vanishes into the role. Coogan co-wrote the screenplay, so his character's anger at Philomena's situation feels borne of genuine outrage.
Refreshingly, the film doesn't pull any punches when it comes to dealing with the moral and spiritual catastrophe that is the Catholic Church. Shears carefully sets up a dichotomy between the Christian values of love and forgiveness embodied by Philomena and the authoritarian sadism of the church. It's nice to see a film that doesn't sit on the fence and as Frears painstakingly reconstructs the events of Philomena's life, he inexorably leads us to a pinnacle of outrage that we reach at precisely the same time as Coogan's Sixsmith.
Philomena also impresses in cinematic terms. This is a small, personal story, yet has been shot with careful attention to colour and shot composition. It's pretty from start to finish, and from small beginnings in London high society, travels far and wide, rural Ireland looking stark, forbidding and majestic, the weather subtly shifting as the narrative develops - ending on a beautiful snowy monochrome winterscape.
This isn't a big, showy film - it works best in the small personal moments between Coogan and Dench; two unhurried detectives working their way towards surprising and shocking conclusions. This slice of life stuff usually isn't my cup of tea, and if I hadn't been sent review tickets I might not have bothered to see Philomena. I'm exceptionally glad I did, Frears, Coogan and Dench have created a warmly funny, intelligent and emotional experience, one powered by an iron core of righteous fury. Highly recommended.
★★★★★
Philomena is on general release from 1st November.
Friday, October 18, 2013
Friday, October 18, 2013
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| Blood Cells - Nafiseh Badiei |
Thursday, October 17, 2013
Thursday, October 17, 2013
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| Nina Arsenault |
After an introduction from Lois Weaver, who recited a bewilderingly long list of organisations and projects that were being represented, we were off. The four speakers , Phoebe Davies, Adrien Sina, Poppy Jackson and Nina Arsenault covered a lot of ground between them: looking back into early 20th Century feminist performance and forwards into an intersectional, inclusive future.
The first speaker, Phoebe Davies, began by outlining how she came to identify as a feminist. It's a depressing fact that the label 'feminist' has been severely tarnished by the slings and arrows of morons. The classic feminist stereotype of the slovenly, masculine, viciously misandrist bra-burning she-barbarian (a stereotype that has its roots way back in caricatures of the suffragettes) still holds firm in the minds of many. With this gargoyle in place it's no wonder that women don't rush to identify with feminism. And anyway, weren't all those battles won back in the 1970s? Gender equality is enshrined in law, women occupy numerous high-ranking positions in society - hell, Barbie became an astronaut - what more do you want?
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| One of Phoebe's pop up nail bars |
You could argue that reducing these women to fashion ephemeralia is a form of trivialisation, but looking at the pictures it's difficult to argue that Davies' project isn't extraordinarily positive. I like that it doesn't hector girls towards feminism, it doesn't tell them what to think, just gives them the information and tools to find out more using a medium they're comfortable with. This project appears to have been pretty damn successful with pop-up nail bars opening up around London, run by the girls who devised the designs.
After staring optimistically into the future we plunged into the past: Adrien Sina wading through a primordial soup of feminist/feminine performance in the avant-garde. Beginning with Valentin de Saint Point's 1912 futurist manifesto Manifeste de la Femme Futuriste, we rocketed through to the commencement of World War II, taking in a dizzying array of artists and their interpretations of femininity. Compressing all this into a 20 minute talk is a Herculean task and frustratingly we were given little time to stop and appreciate what we were being shown. The Powerpoint presentation whizzed through countless fascinating pictures without pause - I wanted time to stop and smell the roses! I admit being teased like this is an excellent advert for Sina's book, but I would have loved to hear him talk without time constraints.
While there were some very lucid participants, the theme that emerged from those speaking was a faint self-obsession. Person after person would sit at the table and begin speaking about themselves. Sure, individual stories can be useful as a tool to divine a wider social experiences, here though, it added up to a fuzzy opacity. The topic of the evening was supposed to be live art performance, yet things drifted pretty damn far from that topic right away.
It was the efforts to wrench things back to the topic of the evening that were the most interesting, particularly a woman called Jennifer (whose surname I don't know.. anyone?) who told us of an astonishing performance piece by Alisa Shvarts, who artificially inseminated herself as many times as she could over nine months, and then induced abortions using abortifacient drugs. Now that's a damn performance worth writing home about. Another of her performances, where Shvarts ran a police investigatory rape kit on herself in public was described as a simple yet enormously effective performance piece.
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| The 'Long Table' in action |
There was also an all too brief segue into Marxist-Feminism, a topic which as far as I'm concerned really gets to the core of the importance of feminism. Understanding discrimination against women as an inevitable symptom of capitalist ideology and class division is a debate I want to hear more of, but it was largely drowned out in a white noise of "ums", "ahs", "likes" and "sort ofs". Weaver's format is well thought out, very sensibly constructed and the participants last night were all smart and sincere but I don't think too much of value was produced in this Long Table.
The highlight of my night was the talk and performance by Poppy Jackson and Nina Arsenault. Poppy is a London-based performance artist who "explores the female body as autonomous zone". I last saw her at Sigmund Freud's house back in the summer at the Totemic Festival where she was smearing dirt on Freud's nice clean windows, a metaphoric action so tidy it speaks for itself.
Nina is a transgender columnist, writer, artist, actress and sex-worker. This night was the first time I'd encountered her work, but whoa nelly! It's great stuff! It's as if her body is her canvas, sculpted into sublime surgically precise perfection all paid for by work in the sex trade. She functions as a work of art, a performance simply by her presence, without even doing anything.
The two have been collaborating over Skype for a number of months, their five day performance beginning that night building on the foundations of work the two have done before. So Nina has been doing exercises like spending two hours whipping herself while riding an exercise bike every night and going without any kind of light for four days; living in a darkness so pitch black that she couldn't tell whether her eyes were open or closed. Poppy explains that the point of exercises like these is to force a personality through a genuine spiritual experience, creating an artificial, but no less powerful catharsis.
After their talk we traipsed over the road to [performance s p a c e] where a large black box had been constructed in the centre of the building. Within it were Nina and Poppy. Poppy was shaving her legs with a straight razor, dipping it in a steel bowl of water and reshaving the same spot over and over again. Nina was smeared in talcum powder, sat in front of a full-length mirror in a silver shimmery dress slowly posing. The floor was covered in sawdust and scattered around the room were various objects. A wedding cake sat on a table in the centre of the room, a funeral urn was in the corner and laptops were playing videos on various projectors.
Overlaid on this was a recorded stream of consciousness monologue by Nina, her speech vocoded into robotic monotony as she talked about institutionalism and various sex acts. Projected onto the wall was cut-up footage of her being fisted, all shot with the artistic sensibility of a video nasty snuff film. I was told that somewhere within the room was a live snake which would add an Edenic layer to the piece. I couldn't spot the snake though, and thought it might be metaphorical, but later reflected that you probably don't feed a metaphor frozen mice.
Staring in through the windows at this little diorama makes you feel like a visitor to a human zoo. The sawdust on the floor, the repetitive behaviour of the artists and the little toys left to grind away the animal's boredom all add up to an feeling not unlike gawping through the plexiglass window at the terminally depressed animals of London Zoo. The act of observation can feel harmless from the point of view of the observer, but being stared at like a specimen day in day out must add up to a cacophony of unwanted attention. Suffering open stares and leers is one of the quintessential feminine experiences, and this performance magnifies the effect tenfold
It's a hell of a neat bit of performance art, the room practically pulsating with the energy of traumatic memories, aesthetics that straddle the line between erotic/grotesque and a constant sense of danger: razorblade pressing against flesh and pink tongue waggling obscenely out of a white powdered face. In a way they are just giving an audience what we want, permission to stare the feminine form yet with a sour, twisted note underlying everything. Go and check it out sometime over the next few days!
This was a kickass night of intelligence, history and sly, smart provocation. Thanks to everyone involved!
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| Poppy Jackson |
The two have been collaborating over Skype for a number of months, their five day performance beginning that night building on the foundations of work the two have done before. So Nina has been doing exercises like spending two hours whipping herself while riding an exercise bike every night and going without any kind of light for four days; living in a darkness so pitch black that she couldn't tell whether her eyes were open or closed. Poppy explains that the point of exercises like these is to force a personality through a genuine spiritual experience, creating an artificial, but no less powerful catharsis.
After their talk we traipsed over the road to [performance s p a c e] where a large black box had been constructed in the centre of the building. Within it were Nina and Poppy. Poppy was shaving her legs with a straight razor, dipping it in a steel bowl of water and reshaving the same spot over and over again. Nina was smeared in talcum powder, sat in front of a full-length mirror in a silver shimmery dress slowly posing. The floor was covered in sawdust and scattered around the room were various objects. A wedding cake sat on a table in the centre of the room, a funeral urn was in the corner and laptops were playing videos on various projectors.
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| Nina Arsenault |
Staring in through the windows at this little diorama makes you feel like a visitor to a human zoo. The sawdust on the floor, the repetitive behaviour of the artists and the little toys left to grind away the animal's boredom all add up to an feeling not unlike gawping through the plexiglass window at the terminally depressed animals of London Zoo. The act of observation can feel harmless from the point of view of the observer, but being stared at like a specimen day in day out must add up to a cacophony of unwanted attention. Suffering open stares and leers is one of the quintessential feminine experiences, and this performance magnifies the effect tenfold
It's a hell of a neat bit of performance art, the room practically pulsating with the energy of traumatic memories, aesthetics that straddle the line between erotic/grotesque and a constant sense of danger: razorblade pressing against flesh and pink tongue waggling obscenely out of a white powdered face. In a way they are just giving an audience what we want, permission to stare the feminine form yet with a sour, twisted note underlying everything. Go and check it out sometime over the next few days!
This was a kickass night of intelligence, history and sly, smart provocation. Thanks to everyone involved!
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
Wednesday, October 16, 2013
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Clare Kenny's new exhibition at VITRINE is the art equivalent of a chameleon - blending seamlessly into to its surroundings. VITRINE is perfectly normal as far as galleries go - a big white room with a wooden floor - but even within this intentionally blank space, Kenny's work is minimalist and modest, almost shrinking backwards into the walls and corners. Now, art is under no obligation to call attention to itself with bold gestures, something cowering in a the corner of a room can be just as packed full of symbolism as whatever they chuck on top of the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square.
Still, you quickly realise that you're going to have to do quite a bit of legwork to get something out of this. The press release helps: explaining some of the ambitions: "using photographic imagery as a means of navigation or a strategy to inform a three-dimensional piece" and that it "allows for the broader exploration of the decoy and draws from our routine efforts to screen a feebler truth with a fabricated reality". In practice this means chopped and screwed objects , things removed from their usual context and placed in new surroundings.
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