January 30, 2008

Images of Alienation

Today, perhaps more than ever, concern for all of the arts is fundamental to the success of any one of the arts. The terms "interdisciplinary" and "multidisciplinary" have featured regularly over the past few decades as a defining term for works of art in all genres. From the get-go, Chez Bushwick has embodied this reality, making it a priority to present music, film, the visual arts, theater and literature along with dance in a continued effort to acknowledge the role collaboration and mutual exploration play in the progression of the arts.

In that spirit, Chez Bushwick presented an evening of video art from France, curated by Christopher Eamon, as part of the 2007 French Institute Alliance Francaise "Crossing the Line Festival." The following are impressions after viewing the films.

If any one thing can be said to be on the minds of contemporary French video artists, it is alienation. At least, that is what one would gather from "Video Art From France," a screening of eight short video works jointly presented by the French Institute Alliance Française and Chez Bushwick as part of the "Crossing The Line Festival" on Friday, October 12, 2007. Selected by Christopher Eamon, curator of the Pamela and Richard Kramlich Collection, each video seemed to speak to a dislocated sensibility by making the familiar seem foreign, nature seem cosmic, and the mundane seem capable of infinite fascination.
Dominique Gonzalez-Förster's "Atomic Park" looks at the arid dunes of White Sands, New Mexico, through a cosmic looking glass. The park, now a recreational destination for tourists, is located near Trinity Site, where the first atomic detonation occurred. In black and white, you see the lunar landscape fizzle in the sun. People appear as little black twigs, moving with the distinct, if concentrated gait of a biped. You can hear shouting back and forth over great distances, but you cannot decipher any words. A soccer ball is kicked around and tumbles across a flat of sand. A group of three people slide down the washed-out slope of a dune, their legs erased each time they dip into the sand. Little picnic huts designed to protect visitors from the sun and wind look like space-age sails. This palpable sense of the foreign-these people don't belong here-is intensified by the knowledge of atomic annihilation that has forever changed the history of this natural wonder.

"You Should Be the Next Astronaut" is Charles de Meaux's sixty-second suggestion of a trailer for a sci-fi film that does not exist. String music accompanies dark images of pack animals that stare into the camera, their eyes, flashing like green diamonds, mirror the stars above them. There is less emphasis on true film trailer aesthetics than there is an attempt to create of morsel of film that tugs at the viewer's willingness to question and anticipate.

"The Boy From Mars" is an astonishingly hypnotic film by Philippe Parreno. Filmed in a remote area in the northern part of Thailand, long, drawn-out shots of nature, lush green foliage and a small pond, a pair of buffalo, and an aeronautic-looking structure made of concrete and wood covered by the billowy skin of a white tarp, create a portrait of a locale that emerges gradually, transforming small feats of graduated change into magnetically powerful events. In one shot, little quavering lights buzz in the sky; airplanes. The building becomes steadily illuminated from within, as two buffalo lumber forward, pulling ropes that generate power for the structure. And when a soft rain begins to fall over the pond, the event is at first without consequence. Only after many seconds, and the landscape begins to show signs of the rain's affects, can you assure yourself it is real.

The mundanity of the cross section of a freeway-a place that is literally passive and meant only to facilitate an impersonal and transitory experience-is the scene of Anri Sala's "Time After Time." Through a grainy night-time image, you can make out the road and a couple of buildings in the background. The focus seems to be coming in and out; you lose the buildings and gain the road. You can hear the atmospheric sounds of distant traffic. Eventually, one of the sounds grows and a light comes in from the side. You know a car is oncoming. As it passes, the jarring flash of the headlights exposes the emaciated and tense body of a horse that is stuck in the meridian of the freeway; then darkness. Eventually you can see more of the horse, as the camera's focus closes in. Another car careens by and the horse kicks up one of its hind legs and holds it there for a moment. Obviously, the horse is out of place. The situation is real and accidental. Sala films it without trying to intervene. This adds to the thrill, as you are filled with horror and fascination.

In 1996, Lucie Dolene sued Disney for copyright restitution when they released Snow White on DVD, the film for which Ms. Dolene provided the French voice of the mythical princess. When she won her case, Disney substituted another woman's voice for Snow White in order to avoid paying Ms. Dolene future royalties. But the French version of the film, with Ms. Dolene's voice, had been around for over thirty years and had become a reference point in France's cultural identity. This is the subject of Pierre Huyghe's documentary, "Blanche Neige (Lucie)," which questions the meaning dislocation in media, here, a result of corporate greed.

Mircea Cantor's looping video piece, "Deeparture," which is meant to be shown as an installation, a deer and a wolf are placed in a white gallery space together with no way to get out. Perhaps, in a reference to Joseph Beuys' "I Like American and America Likes Me," where the artist trapped himself in a gallery with a coyote, Cantor creates a similarly tense environment, filming the two animals from tight angles, maneuvering around them and lacing their apprehensive energies together. The incongruity of these animals, displaced from nature and captive in the apotheosis of human artifice-the gallery-brings a surrealistic edge to this film that could never end.

Shot in black and white and set to an electronic score of cracks and pops, "Totem" presents a moving image of its filmmaker, Maïder Fortuné, dressed as a girl and hopping up and down. The camera is closed in on just her face. The image moves slowly. Gradually, the image begins to smear, folding in on itself, as the body is in motion in either direction. Only then, when the face is at its highest or lowest points, do we see clear images of her face; serene at its zenith, and demonic at its nadir. The superimposition streaks gory portraits of Fortuné across the screen. Monsters of all kinds emerge as the film is slowed down and sped up at varying rates. By scrutinizing the deteriorating affect of motion, Fortuné deracinates the subject from expectations of innocence and preservation.

In "Even If She Had Been a Criminal," a collage film by Jean-Gabriel Périot, dizzying fast forwards of archival footage of various war processions lead to repeated images, in black and white, of crowds of people celebrating. In one shot, someone in the foreground turns around, and, seeing the camera, raises their arms in glee, hands clapping and rejoicing. In another shot, several men stand together in camaraderie; one of the gives a funny smile and reaches his arm out to the side. This goes on, set to a recording of the French National Anthem, until the music gets stuck on a vaguely major chord. At this point, the shots of the celebratory crowds return, but this time, the angles are wider. Behind the person who turns to the camera, you see a woman held up on a barricade; she is getting hit in the face by several men. In the shot of the group of men, you come to see that they are standing around a woman who has a swastika painted on her forehead, and the man with the smile who reaches his arm out, reaches it out to mockingly tickle the woman under her chin; his smile becomes a smirk. This film depicts the social humiliation enacted by the French on French women who were suspected of carrying on relationship with occupying Nazi forces. With its crafty manipulation of media, Périot is able to critique the actions depicted in the source footage, teasing our expectations of documentation, and tightening the grip on a cruel public event that followed an already cruel and alienating war. Posted by Ryan Tracy on January 30, 2008 3:38 PM

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