Posts Tagged ‘Andy Warhol’
Friday, September 18th, 2009
For a couple of years at the end of the sixties hippie heiress Sylvina Boissonnas financed a series of films by a group of young artists and writers with little to no cinematic experience. The end result was the French equivalent of US underground movies, which is hardly surprising when you consider that Andy Warhol and The Factory had been a big influence on this informal group of around a dozen hipsters. When I saw the Zanzibar short Vite by Daniel Pommereulle screened at Tate Modern as part of a 1968 movie season in London last year, I got the impression that very few of those in the audience were aware of Zanzibar films: most seemed to have turned up to see the 1968 newsreel shorts that were screened alongside Pommereulle’s fabulous 37 minute freak out that takes you from the north African desert to outer space.
When I first heard of Zanzibar, quite a few years ago now, it was via whispered tales of a freaky heiress who would write cheques for hippies who wanted to make films, and then never asked them to account for the money she very freely handed out. Vite is actually the shortest Zanzibar flick, most are an hour to two hours in length, and with one exception they are filmed in 35mm, not the cheaper 16mm format that was so typical of American underground movies. Likewise, little effort was made to distribute Zanzibar material, so it isn’t nearly so well known as transatlantic improvisations by directors such as Maya Deren, Stan Brakhage, Ken Jacobs, Bruce Connor, Jim McBride or Jack Smith. Reflecting Warhol’s Factory aesthetic, Zanzibar films are full of beautiful people, non-actors, a number of whom were high-fashion models. Likewise, the technicians and directors who made these movies were predisposed to formal experimentation because they had little if any film training. The results are on the whole much more interesting than the self-consciously commercial recuperation of letterist cinema by the earlier and older French ‘new wave’ of Jean-Luc Godard and François Truffaut (but not as good as Alain Resnais or Chris Marker when they were firing on all six cylinders).
It has always been difficult to see Zanzibar movies outside Paris, and at least four of the sixteen Zanzibar titles Shafto lists in her pamphlet appear to have been lost. Philippe Garrel is the only film-maker from this group still working as a director today, and he is now well known for more ‘mainstream’ material such as his 2005 movie Regular Lovers, starring his son Louis. Garrel Senior had a ten year relationship with Nico, the model turned drug-icon and pseudo-singer (she also appeared in seven films Garrel directed), and so his name should also be familiar to those with an interest in mock-rock and substance abuse.
The Zanzibar group took their name from a part of Africa that boasted a Maoist regime in the late-sixties, and which some saw as a crossroads between the ‘orient’ and the ‘occident’. An attraction to Maoism is merely one factor that makes it difficult to take the group’s political and mystical pretensions seriously. It should go without saying that despite their deployment of ‘communist’ rhetoric, virtually everyone whose political inspiration can be traced back to Lenin is a moderniser attempting to effect a shift from the formal to the real domination of capital in societies still largely characterised by agrarian modes of production. However, and as I’ve already said, aesthetically Zanzibar represent a real continuation of letterist experimentation in the cinema. Likewise, the fact that two of the Zanzibar films were made by women directors (Un Film by Sylvina Boissonnas and Deux Fois by Jacqueline Raynal) at a time when it was unusual for women to helm French movies, serves to further underscore the way in which the group’s practice ran ahead of its theoretical positions.
Sally Shafto’s pamphlet on Zanzibar consists mainly of an extended essay about the group and its dissolution during a journey through Africa that fell far short of its original geographical and artistic goals. This is appended with a ‘who’s who’ of the group, credits for sixteen Zanzibar films, and sleeve notes for an album of music recorded on the trip that put an end to this loose collective. There are a lot of really groovy photographs illustrating the text too, so despite an ungainly academic prose style quite an odds with the elegant subject matter, this is a good introduction to the Zanzibar group. What I’m reviewing here is a 64 page pamphlet put out by Zazibar USA (AKA Jackie Raynal-Saleh and Joseph J. M. Saleh) in 2000: there is also a dual French and English language book of this material with additional interviews issued as Zanzibar: Les films Zanzibar et les dandys de mai 1968 by Paris Experimental Editions in 2006. Neither publication appears particularly easy to obtain but if you put a little work into getting your mits on this shit your efforts will be well rewarded!
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: 1968, Africa, Alain Resnais, Andy Warhol, Bruce Connor, Chris Marker, Daniel Pommereulle, Deux Fois, François Truffaut, Jack Smith, Jackie Raynal, Jackie Raynal-Saleh, Jean-Luc Godard, Jim McBride, Joseph J. M. Saleh, Ken Jacobs, letterists, London, Louis Garrel, Maya Deren, Nico, Paris, Paris Experimental Editions, Philippe Garrel, Regular Lovers, Sally Shafto, Stan Brakhage, Sylvina Boissonnas, Tate Modern, The Factory, The Zanzibar Films & The Dandies Of May 1968, Un Film, Vite, Zanzibar, Zanzibar: Les films Zanzibar et les dandys de mai 1968
Posted in books, film | 14 Comments »
Wednesday, September 2nd, 2009
The Magician is a 2005 movie written and directed by its ‘star’ Scott Ryan. It was issued on DVD in 2006 and is currently available for a couple of quid in a bargain bin near you (if you live in the UK anyway). This is essentially a no budget film shot on DV for about AS $3000 dollars, it is talk heavy and the dialogue is mainly improvised. Ryan plays Ray Shoesmith, a Melbourne hitman who will make anyone disappear for the right amount of money. Shoesmith’s schtick is that he kidnaps his victims and then murders them at remote locations – this is patently a ridiculous strategy for a successful hitman, so it is clear from the off with this mockumentary that we are in la la land.
Ryan and those around him don’t look like underworld characters, they don’t even come across like actors, they are obviously film students. There are several drug threads in the film, and it pretty much concludes with a tin of cocaine being retrieved from a derelict building in the outback. This seems fitting because Ryan comes across in his own movie as the archetypal cokehead. He not only spouts crap but clearly believes his own bullshit, and would appear to be playing himself. He also looks like and has the mannerisms of someone with a really bad coke habit; in one of the out-takes from the movie he can even be seen dabbing his gums with a finger, leading any viewer with more than two brain cells to rub together to suspect there is coke on the digit.
Ryan may or may not be a cokehead – I can’t prove he is, although I’d be very surprised to discover he wasn’t – but this doesn’t matter. The fact that he looks like he’s constantly buzzed-up accounts for his success in getting his movie theatrically released. Ryan is a man the movie industry can identify with because he appears to be a drug fiend with a chemically enhanced sense of self-belief. The Sun apparently described this movie as ‘Man Bites Dog meets Chopper’, when actually it operates more along the lines of the 1979 Cocaine Cowboys meets The Blair Witch Project. But then neither a cynical Sun hack nor their readers are likely to be familiar with Cocaine Cowboys despite the fact it stars Andy Warhol and Jack Palance and was directed by Ulli Lommel. According to rumour, the drug smuggling rock band in the film were real life ‘cocaine cowboys’ and financed their own movie.
Don’t buy The Magician, although if you like Melbourne as a place you might want to borrow it from someone and watch it with your finger pressed to the fast forward button on your DVD remote control. The making of documentary which depicts Scott Ryan as a sad wannabe still living at home with his parents is funny in short bursts too. The best thing I can say about The Magician is that it gives you a real insight into the mindset of both those who run the commercial film industry and those who want to crack it. Oh, and it is a lot better than certain other examples of no budget schlock, most obviously utter crud like the Amateur Porn Star Killer series. Which is, of course, my way of damning The Magician with very faint praise.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Amateur Porn Star Killer, Andy Warhol, Blair Wiitch Project, Chopper, cocaine, Cocaine Cowboys, Jack Palance, Man Bites Dog, Melbourne, Scott Ryan, The Magician, The Sun, Ulli Lommel
Posted in film | 18 Comments »
Saturday, May 2nd, 2009
Last night I was down at the BFI on the South Bank (the nearest thing you’ll find to a real rock ‘n’ roll club in London these days) to catch the first screening in a series dedicated to notorious underground/art film-maker Stephen Dwoskin, a one time contemporary of Andy Warhol. The first night of this month long season was given over to 5 early underground shorts. After an introduction by William Fowler which laid out Dwoskin’s role as a pioneer in both the New York and London underground movie scenes, the films were screened in chronological order, so Asleep (1961) came first. This shows the movements of a woman’s feet as she sleeps, it appears to have been sped-up and supposedly a whole night’s worth of movement is shown. This is a slight work, with the blanket from which the feet poke proving almost as distracting as the silent movie comedy-style piano soundtrack by Ron Geesin that was added in the late sixties – after Dwoskin had moved from New York to London.
Asleep looks like it comes from a different era to the rest of Dwoskin’s work, it resembles an early Fluxus joke piece and brought to my mind the extensive use of feet and shoes in the collages of Ray Johnson. Nonetheless, the inclusion of Asleep in the programme was useful, since it served to remind viewers that all artists have to start somewhere, and good film-makers develop rather than making their best work first time out. Next up was Alone (1963), which shows a fully clothed girl – identified as Zelda – picking her nose, then smoking a cigarette and moving through various sexually alluring poses. This, like the first short, was a new print and the quality of the film was quite extraordinary (which was not the case with Asleep, due both to inferior lighting and the battering the source for the new print of the 1961 short had obviously suffered over the years). Once again there was a Ron Geesin soundtrack added in the late-sixties after Dwoskin had moved across the Atlantic, but this time it was pulsing industrial-style noise that worked wonderfully with the imagery it accompanied.
The third short Dirty (1965) was shot in London shortly after Dwoskin’s transatlantic relocation. Two nude girls identified as Barbara and Ann, drink booze from a bottle and then frolic on a bed. The camera freezes at key moments and this, alongside the dirty and damaged nature of the black and white print, gives the short a dream-like quality. Dirty almost functions as pornography, but its formalism and minimal soundtrack by Gavin Bryars – again added several years after the film was shot and first screened – will frustrate the expectations of any viewer hoping for a wank fest. I found this film a real groove sensation; but it also left me wondering whether the two women it featured were sex industry professionals, aspirant actresses, or simply acquaintances of the director having a bit of a laugh. The rhythm of Dwoskin’s films is much slower than that of commercial cinema, and after watching Alone and Dirty my head was in a different space and moving at a very different speed from when I’d arrived at the BFI’s Screen 2. Dwoskin can be very trippy, although the effect of his later films is sometimes more like the psychosis induced by too many downers.
The fourth film in the BFI’s shorts screening was Moment (1969). This is shot in colour and shows the face of a girl called Tina Fraser framed on a pillow. The dominant colour is red and this gives the film a warm feel as Tina smokes and either masturbates or simulates this act. We see her face as she works herself up to orgasm, then afterwards in complete relaxation. As a consequence this feels very much like a heterosexual version of Andy Warhol’s Blow Job (1963). Perhaps Dwoskin felt his short Asleep had provided the template for Warhol’s Sleep (1963), and was calling in the debt. Moment was the most carefully composed of the Dwoskin shorts on show last night. That said, the top right side of the screen is a kind of dead space made up of nothing but reddish pillow, with Tina Fraser’s head on the left of the frame; presumably the shot was set up in this way, with a mild imperfection, to prevent viewers from responding to it simply on the level of visual aesthetics.
The 30 minute Trixi (1970), was the longest of the films screened last night. It shows Beatrice Cordua being assaulted by Dwoskin’s camera. At first she has her clothes on, then they have been removed. As Cordua writhes through various poses, it becomes evident that the camera is metaphorically raping her. At various points we see her face and various parts of her body in extreme close-up. Like other Dwoskin women, Cordua is not particularly photogenic: her heavy eye make up is ugly, her skin looks course and uneven, the hair on her head appears to be dirty, while her bushy pubes could do with a trim. Cordua is skinny and looks like she’s not enjoying the best of health. Perhaps Dwoskin’s subjects are typical of what ordinary – as opposed to photogenic – individuals look like on camera; we’re not used to seeing averagely attractive people on film because Hollywood and the entertainment industry are so fixated with beauty. But this isn’t the only reading that might be made of the state of the women in the Dwoskin’s films screened last night; there are parallels with the drug intake – and thus also the states of consciousness – one might associate with the London underground over the period covered in the last three films: a move from mid-sixties exuberance involving alcohol, speed and acid, to the sonambulism of heroin and ultimately burn out.
The soundtrack to Trixi is simply the endless repetition of this name, and that also reflects the psychobabble one might associate with the counterculture at the dawn of the seventies. The verbal repetition of this soundtrack may hark back to a similar effect on The Cut Ups (1966) directed by Anthony Balch, but the use of a single word rather than several repeated phrases ultimately creates a pulse that resembles a heartbeat. By the end, the viewer – like the counterculture – is strung out and beaten into submission. Trixi is an unpleasant and confrontational film precisely because the camera functions as rapist, but for me it does not fit the reductive notions of ‘male gaze’ championed by the likes of Laura Mulvey and dismissed by Carol J. Clover in her book Men, Women, and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film. You’d have to be psychotic to identify with the camera in Trixi, and the film is a formalist exercise because of the sadistic way it forces viewers to acknowledge the difference and distance between themselves and this recording device.
After the screening, I made my way up to The Strand for a bindhi at the India Club Restaurant (2nd Floor, Strand Continental Hotel, 143 Strand, London, WC2R 1JA). This establishment is very broken down and looks like it hasn’t been redecorated since the 1960s, I suspect it only survives because it is right next to the Indian High Commission, and probably attracts custom from there at lunch time. I’ve always liked the non-gastro and undecorated atmosphere at the India Club, although I’ve never thought the food was that great, and it has got worse since I last visited the place a couple of years ago. From The Strand, I moved on to The Foundry in Old Street, where I’d arranged to meet Nina Power and Laura Oldfield Ford. Yet again I only succeeded in exchanging a couple of sentences with Nina before Laura dragged her off to a rave in a squat on Kingsland High Street. I didn’t want to go clubbing and since I hadn’t clocked Foundry owner Tacey Moberly, with whom I might have exchanged a friendly greeting, I decided to check out some action online instead….
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: 1960s, 60s sixties, Alone, Andy Warhol, Anthony Balch, Asleep, Beatrice Cordua, BFI, Blow Job, British Film Institute, Carol J. Clover, central London, Dirty, east London, Fluxus, Gavin Bryars, India Club Restaurant, Indian High Commission, Kingsland High Street, Laura Mulvey, Laura Oldfield Ford, London, Men Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film, Moment, New York, Nina Power, Old Steet, Ray Johnson, Ron Geesin, Sleep, South Bank, south London, Stephen Dwoskin, Strand Continental Hotel, The Cut Ups, The Foundry, The Strand, Tina Fraser, Tracy Moberly, Trixi, William Fowler
Posted in film | 28 Comments »
Sunday, March 1st, 2009
Ray Johnson was a pop artist, friend of Andy Warhol and one of the key figures in international mail art (aestheticised communication in the form of a ‘paper net’ that acted as a precursor to the world wide web). He committed suicide in 1995 and had dropped out of the New York art scene years before that, opting instead for non-commercial underground activity. Johnson was a major figure in the early years of American pop art, but more recently had been largely forgotten beyond an international underground scene that idolised him. I was in communication with Johnson in the 1980s when he initiated a correspondence with me. I’d been aware of him for quite some time before he wrote to me, but I’d never mailed him anything because I figured he must be inundated with letters and requests. That said, Johnson was very much a countercultural figure, so it felt strange to attend a major retrospective of his work at Alex Sainsbury’s new gallery Raven Row in Spitalfields, London.
The show covers everything from Johnson’s early collage works right through to his mail art material. It is the largest exhibition of Ray’s art ever seen in Europe, but he made so much that no retrospective could ever be comprehensive. I’m told about 60 percent of the work in the Raven Row show is owned by Johnson’s estate, who lent it framed, so a less formal system of display was unfortunately not an option. Much of Johnson’s work was ephemeral and designed to be handled by the recipient rather than placed under glass in a gallery. Seen out of context by people who don’t understand that Johnson set out to circumvent the conventional gallery system, his playful output might prove impenetrable. Those who encounter this problem need to think of Fluxus and the Situationists, then take a side-ways leap.
The opening was packed and the overwhelming majority of those attending were London art world insiders who seemed to have no idea who Ray Johnson was, and the few who paid any attention to his work appeared very puzzled by it. Most were present for the event, the first night of Alex Sainsbury’s huge new non-commercial gallery. The following is a typical example of an overheard conversation:
Person A: What do you think of this then?
Person B: It’s a great way to spend 30 million pounds!
Alex Sainsbury refuses to be drawn on how much money he’s put into his new space, so unless this overheard conversation was between Raven Row insiders (which I doubt), then the figure cited is just a wild guess. That said, it’s obvious a lot of money has been sunk into the venture. The outer fabric consists of two Grade I listed eighteenth-century Huguenot silk merchants’ houses and the nondescript commercial building that stood behind them. Likewise, many hours of hard thinking clearly went into deciding what to strip out and what to retain. The architects responsible are 6a, a team made up of Tom Emerson and Stephanie MacDonald, who originally met as students at the Royal College of Art and now live together as a couple. The RCA connection is continued in the form of Sainsbury’s assistant Alice Motard, who has just graduated from the curation course taught at that college. The space is clean but retains plenty of period details. I can’t say the rococo plasterwork is to my taste, but it is apparently completely authentic. The building is located just off Bishopsgate on the edge of the City of London, and close to Liverpool Street station. From the front windows you can see the site of the final and most bloody Jack The Ripper slaying, whose victim Mary Kelly shares a name with an iconic 20th century feminist artist. At the time of the murder in 1888 the location was known as Dorset Street, but it is now a multi-storey car park. For much of the 20th century neighbouring Artillery Lane in which Raven Row stands was also run down, and a doss house situated just yards from this tasteful new art venture only closed down 10 or so years ago.
Alex Sainsbury is a keen observer of the London art scene and with Raven Row he has set out to transform it by introducing important but neglected artists to an overly commercialised sector. He’s certainly done his homework, I was introduced to him at an opening in Hackney last year and he not only knew who I was but also that I’d been in correspondence with Ray Johnson. Likewise, he’s written the main catalogue essay for the Johnson show, not something I could imagine Charles Saatchi doing. The Raven Row opening was a crush and those present were very much from the middle and lower-strata of the art world. I spotted no big names. The artists I ran into included photographer Rut Blees Luxemburg, film-maker Mark Waller, mixed media experts Jemima Stehli and Janette Parris, magician turned artist Jonathan Allen, sound manipulator Richard Crow, and S. E. Barnet (currently showing in the tiny Five Years Gallery in Hackney). In terms of curators those visible to me were mainly from the assistant level at the Tate, Ben Borthwick rather than the likes of director Nicholas Serota. It might be this mix of people was a tactical decision on Sainsbury’s part and that he is looking to have an impact on the art scene from ground level up rather than working with a top downwards model of influence. Or it could be that a more select and sedate event with even better food and wine was held for major art world names before the hoi polloi arrived. Your guess is as good as mine! That said, Camden Arts Centre director Jenni Lomax was all present and correct alongside the hoi polloi, but then she also sits on the Raven Row board.
Leaving aside Clive Phillpot, Simon Ford and Alastair Brotchie, the opening appeared bereft of those I know with a long term interest in Ray Johnson. But then most of those who’ve dug Johnson since way back when operate completely outside conventional art circuits. I didn’t see anyone I knew in the eighties who’d been involved in the London mail art scene. The Johnson preview was very crowded but even so my impression was the likes of Mark Pawson, Stefan Szczelkun, Mike Leigh, Hazel Jones and David Jarvis, just weren’t present. Which is a shame because I’m sure they’d have really enjoyed seeing so much of Ray’s work in one place, while the good wine would have totally grooved them. Simon Ford asked me if there were still hardcore mail artists about who might turn up to protest against a curated Ray Johnson show. My feeling was that the overwhelming majority of the anti-art brigade would be very happy to see his work getting wider exposure. Fordie also expressed surprise that Tate archivist Adrian Glew didn’t appear to be present, since he has a long history of interest in the marginal arts. Perhaps Glew was busy elsewhere, I certainly didn’t clock him at the Johnson beano.
Eventually most people moved on from the overcrowded gallery and across Commercial Street to Christ Church, a Hawksmoor building, which was the scene of further partying. A lot of people had emerged from the woodwork for the event and I found myself talking to the likes of Kodwo Eshun and Jane Rollo. I hadn’t seen a London art world shindig that was quite so rockin’ for at least two years. So it felt particularly surreal that it should be for a major Ray Johnson retrospective! But with this nudge from Alex Sainsbury, and a little help from stuff like John W. Walter’s 2002 Johnson documentary How To Draw A Bunny, it can’t be long before the entire London art world starts acting as if it grew up on Ray’s oeuvre.
Please Add To & Return To Ray Johnson is on at Raven Row, 56 Artillery Lane, London E1 7LS, 28 February-10 May 2009.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: 1980s, 6a, 80s, Adrian Glew, Alastair Brotchie, Alex Sainsbury, Alice Motard, All Saints, Andy Warhol, art world insiders, Artillery Lane, Ben Borthwick, Bishopsgate, Camden Arts Centre, Charles Saatchi, City of London, Clive Phillpot, collage, David Jarvis, Dorset Street, eighties, Five Years Gallery, Fluxus, Hackney, Hawksmoor, Hazel Jones, How To Draw A Bunny, Huguenot silk merchants, Jack The Ripper, Jane Rollo, Janette Parris, Jemima Stehli, Jenni Lomax, John W. Walter, Jonathan Allen, Kodwo Eshun, Liverpool Street station, London, mail art, Mark Pawson, Mark Waller, Mary Jane Kelly, Mary Kelly, Mike Leigh, Nicholas Serota, Raven Row, Ray Johnson, RCA, Richard Crow, rococo plasterwork, Royal College of Art, Rut Blees Luxemburg, S. E. Barnet, Simon Ford, Situationists, Spitalfields, Stefan Szczelkun, Stephanie MacDonald, Tate, Tom Emerson
Posted in culture gossip & parties, exhibitions | 57 Comments »
Thursday, February 19th, 2009
Lynne Tillman and Tony White speaking and reading at Toynbee Studios last night proved to be the best event so far in the “Existential Territories” series of talks organised by Book Works. Tony chose to present himself very much as a writer, which I found curious since he is art school trained and his textual practice originally emerged from story-telling elements in his performance work. Tony read an unpublished story woven around a set of words chosen by an artist collaborator. Lynne read from her novel American Genius, the first tme she’s performed from this book in London. The focus of the Q & A was very much on why artists were keen to have Lynne and Tony contribute fictional stories to their catalogues, and what this might signify.
After the show I spoke to a slew of curators and the main drift of these conversations seemed to be less than complimentary observations about Okwui Enwezor. I pretty much agreed with what other people had to say about his theoretical incoherence since I was less than impressed by his ridiculous observation in the Tate Altermodern catalogue that: “Looking for an equivalent of an Andy Warhol in Mao’s China is to be seriously blind to the fact that the China of the Pop art era had neither a consumer society nor a capitalist structure…” Really? And just who is gonna attempt looking for a Warhol-type figure in the midst of Mao’s ‘cultural revolution’ anyway? Likewise, this sentence – and Enwezor’s prose in general – is dreadfully inelegant. It is also willfully misleading because while 1960s China may not have boasted a consumer society, it clearly had a capitalist structure. You need only turn to something such as the Wikipedia entry on Amadeo Bordiga to learn this (that is if you didn’t already know it):
“Bordiga developed an understanding of the Soviet Union as a capitalist society… He wanted to show how capitalist social relations existed in the kolkhoz and in the sovkhoz, one a cooperative farm and the other the straight wage-labor state farm. He emphasized how much of agrarian production depended on the small privately owned plots (he was writing in 1950) and predicted quite accurately the rates at which the Soviet Union would start importing wheat after Russia had been such a large exporter from the 1880s to 1914. In Bordiga’s conception, Stalin, and later Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Che Guevara etc. were “great romantic revolutionaries” in the 19th century sense, i.e. bourgeois revolutionaries. He felt that the Stalinist regimes that came into existence after 1945 were just extending the bourgeois revolution, i.e. the expropriation of the Prussian Junker class by the Red Army, through their agrarian policies and through the development of the productive forces. Bordiga’s idea that capitalism equals the agrarian revolution first is the key to the 20th century; it’s certainly the key to almost everything the left has called “revolutionary” in the 20th century, and it is the key to rethinking the history of Marxism and its entanglement with ideologies of industrializing backward regions of the world economy.”
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Altermodern, Amadeo Bordiga, American Genius, Andy Warhol, Bolshevik agrarian policy, Book Works, capitalism, Chairman Mao, Che Guevara, China, cultural revolution, east London, Existential Territories, Ho Chi Minh, industrialisation, Joseph Stalin, London, Lynne Tillman, Marxism, Okwui Enwezor, Red Army, Soviet Union, Tate, Tony White, toynbee Studios, Wikipedia
Posted in culture gossip & parties, talks | 18 Comments »
Monday, February 2nd, 2009
Regina José Galindo is a 34 year-old artist from Guatemala City and the major retrospective of her work that opened this weekend at Modern Art Oxford (AKA Oxford MOMA and Madam Mao’s) entitled The Body Of Others is stunning. The large upper gallery contains 3 video works: I’ll Shout It To The Wind (1999), Who Can Erase The Traces (2003) and The Fashionable Cut (2005). In the first, Galindo hangs by a harness from an arch in the centre of Guatemala City and is filmed literally shouting her poems to the wind; as she does so she drops sheets of her poetry and the crowd beneath her scramble after the paper thinking it might be money, since this is an area used for illegal currency exchanges. Who Can Erase The Traces is the piece that broke Galindo internationally, in it she walks from the Constitutional Palace across Guatemala City to the National Palace, stepping every so often into a bowl of human blood so that she leaves a trail of red footprints behind her. The final video in the first gallery shows Venezuelan plastic surgeon Billi Spence using a marker pen to indicate how a beauty industry professional would ‘improve’ Galindo’s body The Fashionable Cut is one of a number of works in which Galindo presents the viewer with a problematic eroticisation of her nude body. She appears in this piece as an attractive and very young looking 30 year-old, but it is simultaneously a document of what is supposedly physically wrong with her from the perspective of popular contemporary body aesthetics.
Galindo has a background in advertising and it was only a couple of years ago that she was able to give up copy-writing and become a full-time professional artist. What Galindo has taken from advertising is the practice of distilling sets of ideas and experiences into a single image; she uses this process to raise social issues but in a poetic form. The result is neither activism nor advertising because Galindo does not provide solutions to the problems she raises. If Andy Warhol were still alive he’d be both fascinated and mesmerised by her because she combines an insider knowledge of advertising industry practices with YouTube aesthetics. Galindo does not employ a regular cameraman and her work does not have the slick finish we associate with so much of the video art produced in the overdeveloped world. Instead she will hand a camera to anyone who is available to record what she’s doing and much of the resultant footage is extremely rough, with some of her films suffering very badly from camera shake. This is a deliberate choice, one Galindo has made because she does not want the poetic core of her work obscured by an unnecessarily smooth finish.
The upper gallery at Madam Mao’s is spacious and the huge screens onto which Galindo’s works are projected use the space to great effect. The Fashionable Cut is silent, the other two films feature soundtracks of incidental street noises with the volume on both turned up so that they blend into each other. By this means a pleasing tension is created between the clean space and the chaotic camerawork and street sounds. This is a very slick piece of installation that deploys films which have been distributed in part on the internet (including via platforms such as YouTube) fantastically well on a monumental scale in a gallery setting.
The middle gallery is dominated by photo documentation. Angelina (2001) consists of 31 pictures each documenting a consecutive day on which Galindo dressed as a domestic servant. This was done to test public reaction to someone pursuing activities that might be considered unusual for a person of this station. Survival Skills Course For Men & Women Preparing To Travel To The United States (2008) is a video documenting ten people learning skills that will aid illegal entry into the wealthiest economy in the Americas. America’s Family Prison (2008) features Galindo and her family living in the type of cell in which illegal immigrants into the US are detained, and a photograph of this architectural structure. Finally there are two versions of The Conquest- Scalp (2009), a hand-crafted wig and a photograph of a similar item, one made from the hair of indigenous Guatemalan women and the other from hair sourced in southern India. Again the crisp and spare installation shows the work to best advantage.
The Piper Gallery features five further films, four of which are shown on Sony Cube monitors. Confession (2007) records a volunteer Spanish nightclub bouncer repeatedly pushing Galindo’s head into a barrel of water. The volunteer becomes extremely enthusiastic about the role he is playing, to the extent of ignoring an agreed stop signal and as an improvised addition to the scripted performance shoving Galindo across the room into a pile of wood. Amir Shakouri of La Caja Blanca, where this performance was staged, told me the audience directed their anger about the violence of the action towards Galindo rather than at the bouncer who’d overstepped the limits set down for this piece. I don’t find this particularly surprising, since art lovers often credit cultural practitioners with a level of agency they do not in fact possess, and when someone like Galindo exposes the fact that artists are every bit as constrained by capitalist social relations as anyone else, culture vultures tend to become enraged about having their illusions shattered.
Why Are They Still Free? (2006) depicts Galindo in the eighth month of pregnancy positioned on a bed in the way the Guatemalan army prepared pregnant indigenous women for gang rape; in this piece Galindo is restrained by umbilical cords. Social Cleansing (2006) shows Galindo being hosed down with highly pressurised water, something I vividly remember seeing done to rough sleepers in London in the 1970s; it forced them to move on and given the cold climate was likely to compromise the health of this vulnerable group, potentially fatally. XX – II (2007) documents workmen hired by Galindo placing tombstones on unmarked graves in Guatemala City. At the back of the exhibition space is a large screen onto which Identification Of A Body (2008) is projected. In the film Galindo lies heavily anesthetised with a sheet draped over her body, the audience lift the covering as if they were going to identify a corpse. This video is far slicker than anything else in the exhibition, and some of the shots within it even bear a striking resemblance European Renaissance painting. It is thus shocking proof that Galindo’s trademark slacker aesthetic is a matter of conscious choice.
Not quite a part of the exhibition, and hidden away next to the Madam Mao’s reception desk, is Breaking The Ice (2008). This is a video of a performance in Oslo for which Galindo sat naked in a cold room with clothes laid out next to her, waiting for the audience to dress her. Before the Madam Mao’s opening, Galindo gave an anti-performance called Warm Up (2009). Those attending were made to queue before being admitted into an over-heated room; Galindo was not present and the work consisted of the audience reaction to this. This anti-action was followed by a talk during which Galindo’s frustration with the tendency of European audiences to exoticise her work was greeted with incomprehension by many of those listening; and this was particularly noticeable when Galindo stated that the reason she documented her activities was so that she could live from the sale of her photographs and videos (rather than starving or having to return to her former employment in the advertising industry). Tate curator Gabriela Salgado made a passionate intervention during the Q & A at the end, and this brought forth thanks from Galindo.
Listening to Galindo speak both during the talk and later in the more intimate setting of the Madam Mao’s cafe, I was very much struck by the way her work was shifting away from its initial focus on her own body, to an ever increasing emphasis on the manipulation of her audience. Indeed, as was the case in Oxford, Galindo no longer needs to be physically present for her live actions to be realised. It was also interesting to see just how small Galindo is in person, I’d guess around 4 feet 10 inches, I hadn’t realised she was this tiny from watching her videos. That said, Galindo has a larger than life personality and this is the most exciting exhibition I’ve seen at Madam Mao’s since the Gustav Metzger retrospective a decade ago (back in the days when the venue was still calling itself the Oxford Museum of Modern Art). So if you find yourself anywhere near Oxford, do yourself a favour and go check this one out. Regina José Galindo: The Body Of Others at Modern Art Oxford (MAO) runs from 31 January to 29 March 2009. Galindo’s Oxford performance and talk took place on 30 January 2009.
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – www.stewarthomesociety.org – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: advertising, America's Family Prison, Amir Shakouri, Andy Warhol, Angelina, Billi Spence, Breaking The Ice, Confession, Gabriela Salgado, Guatemala City, Gustav Metzger, I'll Shout It To The Wind, Identification Of A Body, La Caja Blanca, Madam Mao's, Modern Art Oxford, nudity, Oxford Museum of Modern Art, Regina José Galindo, Social Cleansing, Survival Skills Course For Men & Women Preparing To Travel To The United States, The Body of Others, The Conquest - Scalp, The Fashionable Cut, Warm Up, Who Can Erase The Traces, Why Are They Still Free?, XX - II, YouTube
Posted in exhibitions | 46 Comments »
Thursday, January 29th, 2009
The commercially driven nature of Web 2.0 has been stressed by many commentators, for instance Tim O’Reilly in his influential essay of September 2005 “What Is Web 2.0: Design Patterns and Business Models for the Next Generation of Software“. Thus when I first looked at MySpace a little before O’Reilly published that text, rock bands clearly knew how to promote themselves to a new (as well as their existing) audience via this site, but writers and artists on the whole didn’t. The later two categories of would-be culture industry ‘professionals’ tended to use the internet as a means of advertising (largely ineffectively) what they were doing, rather than integrating their activities into it. Since MySpace made streamed sound central to its platform, musicians found the site was tailor made for them, and it didn’t require much adaptation on their part to benefit from it.
There were and still are very few professional artists on MySpace with notable exceptions like Martin Creed and Jane Pollard/Ian Forsyth; most of the art profiles are either for complete amateurs or run by fans of dead iconoclasts like Duchamp and Warhol. The majority of artists I encounter in London don’t seem to like the web very much (among other things it doesn’t allow them much control over the way their work is viewed and who sees it, which is why they prefer galleries), but Facebook attracts them as a networking tool. On Facebook gallery artists fit in very well alongside suit wearing culture industry professionals and corporate managers with their spreadsheets and calculators. If gallery artists have work they want to sell and that really is their bottom line, those artists working on the web (and doing more than simply publicising upcoming shows and reproducing catalogue essays) are more likely to have something to say or at least formalist concerns they wish to explore. Strangely beyond those involved in genres such as conceptual literature (Kenny Goldsmith is the most prominent figure in this field) or perhaps cyberpunk, even fewer writers than artists show much interest in the internet as a creative tool, despite the fact it is language based and offers enormous scope for ‘social sculpture’.
Moving on, the developmental model many Web 2.0 businesses work with is offering a service either cheaply or for free in order to mine data from their users. Web business ‘guru‘ Tim O’Reilly doles out advice along the lines of: ‘leverage customer-self service and algorithmic data management to reach out to the entire web… For competitive advantage, seek to own a unique, hard-to-recreate source of data… The key to competitive advantage in internet applications is the extent to which users add their own data to that which you provide…. Involve your users both implicitly and explicitly in adding value to your application…. Set inclusive defaults for aggregating user data as a side-effect of their use of the application…. When benefits come from collective adoption, not private restriction, make sure that barriers to adoption are low. Follow existing standards, and use licenses with as few restrictions as possible. Design for “hackability” and “remixability.”… Don’t package up new features into monolithic releases, but instead add them on a regular basis as part of the normal user experience. Engage your users as real-time testers…“
In recent years networking theory has made much of the notion of weak ties. The pioneer in this area was Mark Granovetter in the 1970s and by the late 1990s his work had been combined with Stanley Milgram’s research into how many links separate people from each other (the so called six degrees of separation) by mathematicians Duncan Watts and Steve Strogatz. These ideas were later popularised in mass market paperbacks like Mark Buchanan’s “Small World” (known as “Nexus” in the USA). A completely ordered network (where every node is tied only to its neighbours) is inefficient in terms of its degrees of separation: but when some long distance ‘weak ties’ are thrown in these massively reduce the number of moves needed to get from any one node to any other. Thus from the perspective of networking theory MySpace is superior to both Facebook and Bebo since it encourages weak ties as well as networking among established friends (Facebook and Bebo actively discourage users from befriending people they don’t know). That said, those ‘virtual’ communities that go beyond ties to a single platform and that aren’t committed to capitalist business practices are infinitely superior to anything MySpace can offer.
Web business ‘gurus’ like Tim O’Reilly recognise the strength of collective activity, but they attempt to recuperate it for individual gain. Their world is one in which everything revolves around a bottom line; their outlook is essentially behaviourist, web surfers are enticed to click through links and to buy something (anything). Business data miners are interested in what makes someone click through links and make purchases, not why they do it. Thus what doesn’t gain clicks is either discarded or placed so far down search lists that few surfers will find it. This is a pseudo-meritocracy in which whatever is already popular has its position constantly reinforced, and what isn’t popular is buried under a mountain of celebrity trivia in a world that is currently ruled (‘ironically’ of course) by the likes of Lady GaGa. Nonetheless, social networking trends are constantly shifting and while both advertising and data mining on platforms like MySpace are now slicker than 3 or 4 years ago, that particular site is still not exactly generating a huge profit. Indeed, last year saw a small downturn in MySpace and Facebook usage in the UK (see “Is Facebook going out of fashion” – you’ll need to roll down the page on The Guardian site to see this).
So trendsetters, perhaps this really can be the year in which millions more groovers and bloggers break with the digital establishment by embracing a WordPress freakout. The easiest way to do this is to set up a blog on the WordPress site, but I’d prefer you all to be more dispersed and for as many of you as possible to use your own domains…. And let’s start using our sites to really play with the web, to spread myths and confusion, create false identities, disorientate the authorities, and inauguarate communal situations that overflow all the barriers between the so called ‘virtual’ and ‘real’ worlds! Oh and a few backward glances at how we got here wouldn’t go astray either… so if you’re not already familiar with them, look up the Luther Blissett Project, neoism and mail art (the ‘original’ pre-web paper net). “Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it.”
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/ – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: 6 degrees of separation, advertising, Andy Warhol, Bebo, conceptual literature, corporate managers, culture industry professionals, cyberpunk, Duncan Watts, Facebook, formalism, gallery artists, Guardian, Ian Forsyth, Jane Pollard, Kenneth Goldsmith, Lady GaGa, Luther Blissett Project, mail art, Marcel Duchamp, Mark Buchanan, Mark Granovetter, Martin Creed, MySpace, neoism, Nexus, Small World, Stanley Milgram, Steve Strogatz, Tim O'Reilly, weak ties, Web 2.0, What Is Web 2.0
Posted in Web 2.0 | 27 Comments »
Wednesday, January 14th, 2009
Back in the eighties when I was unemployed I used to hang out a lot at the old Scala cinema in Kings X coz they did ultra-cheap day time movie screenings…. the programmes varied from day to day, but not that much from month to month, but they showed some great films, and among them a slew of Andy Warhol movies such as Chelsea Girls…. Aside from night screenings of Empire on the outside of the South Bank complex a few years ago, my Warhol viewing experiences recently had been restricted to the Raro reissues on DVD from Italy…. So I figured I’d check out the Andy Warhol: Other Voices, Other Rooms exhibition before it closed. After all, this Hayward Galley show at the South Bank Centre had been heavily advertised as featuring many of Warhol’s hard-to-see films. Unfortunately, the experience of so much Warholia crammed so tightly together left me feeling disappointed and frustrated.
The first room featured projections of Factory Screen Tests, Warhol memorabilia and a few paintings. Some material was hung so high you couldn’t see it properly, other stuff was hung too low, and the arrangement of the projection made it hard to stand back and enjoy the Screen Tests at a distance. In case you don’t know (most of you do, I know), the Screen Tests are silent portraits made between 1964 and 1966 in which the often famous subjects look at the camera without moving for two minutes and forty-five seconds. The films are slowed down so that they last four minutes. The Hayward was showing a selection of 40 Screen Tests, so that provided coming on for three hours of fun for any visitor who wanted to watch them all from beginning to end.
The second room was dominated by Warhol’s cable TV productions from 1979 until his death. This cheap TV was laid out like a themed trash chain restaurant from the 1980s… the place was done up with stars and stripes in the form of its hangings and stools…. It was clearly impossible to see all of Warhol’s gaudy TV productions in a single visit (I didn’t clock any info giving running times for this material, but at a guess there was 24 hours worth of viewing, and possibly a lot more)… but I did see plenty of fashion that didn’t much interest me, a lot of Debbie Harry who on the whole looked good, London mod renewal band Secret Affair performing in New York at the start of the eighties… oh let’s fast forward, there was an interview with Cindy Sherman, and while it was as vacant as any other trash TV culture feature, I can’t recall seeing film of Sherman talking about her work anywhere else, so on that score it was curious… but MOR music bores Hall & Oates were on the same show… On another show I was groovin’ to KONK, then The Ramones appeared and did Bonzo Goes To Blitzberg with like totally amateur handheld camerawork and a couple of girls dancing… oh wacky! Now if the Warhol Foundation stuck this stuff on YouTube I could really enjoy myself with it… but a gallery is the wrong environment to fully enjoy super dumb sleazebag eighties crapola TV.
In a third room were the 1960s films… 19 of them projected in a single space with the sound turned down so low that you could barely hear it, but what audio there was still bled between movies… The set up was visually distracting and might have made for a groovy media total immersion environment if only the volume had been jacked right up on one or more of the films… The sound being so quiet made for a lousy experience, and you couldn’t appreciate anything as an individual item either because of the different projections competing for your attention. The sofas dotted about the place not only made the room feel even more visually cluttered, combined with the black walls they created the impression you were in a really tacky eighties bar. The contextualising material said the combined running times of the films on show ran to nearly 23 hours… There were digital clocks on the wall by each film to tell you how long it had to run, but by watching the change overs between the beginning and end of a few movies, I discovered that the ones I checked were anything up to a couple of minutes out of sync with their timers.
Again, for those that haven’t seen Warhol’s films (hard to imagine for someone like me who grew up on ‘em), between 1963 and 1968 he is believed to have shot coming on for 100 films. Of these, perhaps the most notorious is Sleep, which consists of a stationary camera showing poet John Giorno asleep. Likewise, Blow Job boasts 35 minutes of static shots of a man’s head (his face, not someone giving head). Empire is an eight hour stationary shot of the Empire State building in New York with the sun setting behind it, and then rising again; the action consists of the change from day to night and back again, and lights being put on and off in the building. These early films are silent. When sound was introduced, much of it consisted of hipster talk between members of Warhol’s Factory set. Warhol also experimented with split-screen projection, most famously in Chelsea Girls. All the films mentioned here are included in the Hayward show, alongside the likes of Kitchen and Bike Boy. However, my personal favourite Vinyl was missing. Almost compensating for that was Taylor Mead looking totally wack in Nude Restaurant.
From the summer of 1968 onwards, Warhol worked only as a producer on the ongoing series of his Factory films, employing Paul Morrissey to direct them. None of the Morrissey directed films are included in the Hayward show, which is strange since they clearly form a bridge between Warhol’s work as a director prior to 1968 and his cable TV productions of the 1980s. And incidentally I haven’t even mentioned all the moving image material in the show, since there are also Factory Diaries and Videos on side walls of the room containing Warhol’s cable TV.
While Warhol’s TV productions are clearly junk and intended as such, the 1960s movies were carefully composed and in them various formal issues were worked through. The installation of the Warhol films in the Hayward made them look every bit as trashy as his cable TV. So for now the best way of catching this material is via the Raro DVD reissues…. The idea of so overloading a show with video and audio material (yes there were hours of Warhol tape recordings too) that it is impossible to take it all in, even over repeated visits to the exhibition, is kinda funny… but beyond that this show sucked. The Hayward is a large gallery and the upstairs was closed during the Warhol show, so the curators made a conscious decision to cram the work together, they had the option of spreading it out over twice as much space. Warhol was an ironic artist, but if you based your judgement solely on this badly installed exhibition, you’d think he was into trivialisation and nothing else…. Andy Warhol: Other Voices, Other Rooms even managed to make the Warhol painting it included look bad. There should have been a warning sign outside saying: “Welcome to Planet Hollywood and the new populist curation at the South Bank!”
And while you’re at it don’t forget to check – http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/ – you know it makes (no) sense!
Tags: Andy Warhol, Bike Boy, Blow Job, Bonzo Goes To Blitzberg, Chelsea Girls, Cindy Sherman, Debbie Harry, Empire, Hall & Oates, Hayward Gallery, John Giorno, KONK, Nude Restaurant, Ramones, Scala cinema, Secret Affair, Sleep, South Bank Centre, Vinyl
Posted in exhibitions | 36 Comments »