Out in the Field

David Claerbout — Hauser & Wirth, London

Will add link to show blurb

David Claerbout – Hauser and Wirth

Notes made at the time of viewing.

Did that thing of reading the press release first which told me exactly what “Riverside” (the double screen work in main gallery) was about and for and how I should react. Would I have had this reaction without reading it – would I have watched it all without reading it is probably the question. It sites a key moment in the work – when the double projections marry up – that I may not have waited for without reading it. This work needs this press release? And I don’t receive anything different to the work that is prescribed.

Two screens, a man in one and a women in the other roaming over the same bit of countryside, at different times I think. They both get to a house but they are trapped in their own films, they cannot see each other. It reminds me of a description of a Fellini film I read in the Shirin – Kirostami notes – that his characters are stuck in the frame. Infact they only exist in the frame.

The river acts as a metaphor for time – yawn! Both films meet when the characters both get to a dead tree at the same time that crosses the river, but not crosses into each others films. However it says in these notes – I did enjoy the dead tree shots and the sound coming together, but then it ends very quickly and there is not enough time to think about what has just happened.

In the basement Night Cleaners – boldy simple, filmed in a modernist house which is owned by someone very rich. Would the cleaner not have put the light on? (seems contrived) the cleaner pads around cleaning in the dark, the video of the dark is really luxurious and sleek. Then the cleaner leaves on a bike and the sun comes up and some classical music kicks in – PURE CHEESE, PURE CINEMATIC CHEESE – is this for real, all this OTT sun clap trap – I must have missed something?

Upstairs
A photograph of an important and grand amercian occasion. One photograph subject to the Ken Burns effect(?) and the photograph is made to look 3D, and I think Hilary Clinton is in it. Is this an HD frame grab – what do they look like? The American National Anthem is playing and we float over and around the photograph. They are seated in the photograph – would they not stand up for the anthem?

Alex Kershaw, Flat Screen. Beaconsfield Gallery

Has the Beaconsfield turned into a cafe, maybe. On entering the food on offer is much better advertised than the art. I’ve come to see Alex Kershaw’s videos.

“Alex Kershaw is based in Sydney and works with video and photography to generate unexpected relationships between people and their terrain. Often spending extended periods researching locations and characters, Kershaw’s quiet activism blurs the boundaries between everyday activity and devised performance as ordinary people become involved in the work.”

Shocked to find his work is on a screen in the cafe, and only one of the three I was expecting, they are on a rolling programme. Blurb for the one on show this week at end. Had to watch his work through people wolfing down their organic lunches and supping their lattes. Could not hear film… Couldn’t decipher video at first, are they acting in their religiuos procession, or are they acting out of this, acting away from their procession. Is this a documentary of something happening anyway, There is a scene with pink wool, being wrapped around trees and then people by themselves, beautiful and intriguing and then goes to a procession that must be traditional, this contrast of ritual designed by the artist to one designed by 1000 years of culture is interesting. Video excellent quality. Then scenes of work, the ritual movements of working, picking, raking and sowing. I just read the blurb, yes this is it, a video made from weaving work, religious and artist devised movements. What ones have value and meaning? Documentary with performative acts, acts done for the camera versus acts done for society and religion versus acts done without thinking (raking?) . Documentary and yet art actiions all in one film, accross one video surface. The only food for thought in the Beaconsfield Cafe.

Phi Ta Khon Project, 2008/09
17’ 33” single screen version
21 July - 9 August

In 2008 Kershaw travelled to Dansai, a small town in Loei Province of Northern Thailand and worked with the local council and community during their annual Phi Ta Khan festival. Translated as ‘ghosts follow people’, Phi Ta Khon combines animist, Brahmin and Buddhist traditions to articulate bonds between the dead and the living, between sexual and agricultural fertility and between the community and their spirit-infested natural world.

The Phi Ta Khon Project, orchestrates a series of displacements in the spirit of Magic Realism, weaving harvest landscapes and documents of the festival with choreographed sequences in which local farmers, food vendors and council employees are the actors and challenging traditional roles and meanings.

http://www.beaconsfield.ltd.uk/projects/alexkershaw/index.html

DIY Rapture - Team Lump, Cell Project Space

Made notice board, faked notice board, copied notice board, Replica notice board, twisted notice board, fictioned and made to deliver a different message notice board, made out of paper to look like paper.its actually called”Bulletin board”. Too much fascination with the idea of the notice board, meant I didn’t notice the notices… (all reflecting on American Cults?)

Main room big staircase and some shoes made out of paper and card.

Alan Kane - Life Class

TV programme 2/4

Life Drawing - Art Angel

Channel Four 12.30 pm

Gary Hume

Why is the model so attractive and female? I have inside info that this is the weakest programme out of the four.

“Remember you are not taking a photo of her - you are making another thing. it is your drawing - make mistakes keep them in. you’re making a good thing out of a good looking thing ” - this is gary hume talking (i bet gary hume chose this model)

i thought we’d only see the model, not gary hume.

doesn’t capture any of the frisson of being in a room with a naked person. They are positioned carefully to not see pubic hair?  - just boobs.

They are posing for the TV, not the artist.

they all say (the artists taking the programme) it is very difficult to draw and talk at the same time

where is the work?  -  alan kane directed the shooting of the tv.

music is very “daytime”

Initially I thought the programme would be a bit more minimal, less daytime, although as it went on i appreciated more that the shots on the model are held a long time and the artist talking isn’t necessary “informative” - it is the noise of his process.The programme has been made to draw along with and not watch. A new use for the TV? Active TV.

They don’t talk about the fact that Gary Humes drawing (we glimpse it at the end) is very Gary Hume like.

NOT I - Samuel Beckett, Royal Festival Hall

Copy of immediate notes made during performance.
There was the play performed and the a talk afterwards.

Stream of consciousness,
My eyes getting adjusted to the dark.
The mouth is so small – yet so detailed.
She means “I”
Really fast – untheatrical speed.
“tell” I remember feeling just a mouth – feeling like a mouth.
Then it is over.
It was a physical blur, it was camera shake. My head was whirring – a real blur – A PHYSICAL BLUR


Billy Whitelaw – video interview as she’s in hospital.
“Beckett so accurate and obsessed that he would cross out details like the third full stop… he said it had to “go at the speed of thought” NO ACTING, NO EXPRESSION – he hates acting.
This is the most difficult piece ever.
Not I  - stays with the actress, it becomes part of you”

Fiona Shaw – video interview
“The world has got more used to fragmented sentences – Not I does not sound as strange anymore.
He allows women to be the voice of tragedy – but it is HIS voice. (the video of Fiona Shaw was out of synch, made me very aware of video and sound and was the opposite of the performance which was the very epitome of synchronization – the red small mouth, a weird shape with the sound of the voice that was so amazing – I couldn’t believe it was happening.

Live Panel Discussion

Check Happy Days
Beckett puts massive pressure on a director to consider what “performance “ means.

He creates something domestic but breathes out poetry.

A Beckett Style can be a trap.

You think it is about you – its not you think, you are the character but you think that the character is you.

(They think it is all about them)

NOT I – the piece talks about the experience of being the actor doing it .

“There is a narrative – an old women reminiscing  - yet he didn’t want acting but he did want emotion – wants it to play on nerves – the actress doesn’t curate it, just commits raw emotion to it.”

The actress is strapped in, she can’t move, only her mouth moves. (A physical manifestation of a playwrights role?)

“Reading it out doesn’t work, Edward says not true about “don’t act” it’s that Beckett doesn’t want a spurious style of acting – it must be pure (?) it can’t be decorated with emotion – yet people decorate life with emotion?”

The actress bases her performance on speed
Billy Whitelaw took 14mins on the performance and Liza takes 10 mins, to her that means better.

Beckett insists on things being done as he wanted.

It is mesmirising, it is light and image.

“Beckett’s characters have a sense of being watched (by the audience” – it is the light coming onto the mough that starts the talking and she is talking to us.

My thoughts a week later

Becketts work – is so prescriptive, no ways of reinterpreting or restaging (his family’s estate are very strict and will close down productions that are not “correct”)
The works are hermetically sealed, they cannot be changed now they are made – they are like video, it is nopt the medium of the theatre – a script to be interpreted. This co-incides with my thinking about NOT I – not sure it addressed me as live, as theatre) the mouth was so small,  - Katie Mitchell says “the theatre is always in wide angle.

It was a physical blur? It had attributes of a blur – undefinable, speed, Check Raymond Bellour on blur and film.