With separate themes, each cluster featured emerging talent approaching
film making from various vantage points, from the process-oriented to the
message-driven to polished cultural observations.
Exiting
the elevator into the rough space, the viewer is immediately confronted with a
piece created in the same building.
Alyssa Orvis’s installation Rut, an assemblage from Super 8 and video, is
accompanied by a quick-paced metronomic ticking. A suspended monitor screens high-contrast black and white
clips of a woman pacing, exiting a fire escape to an industrial rooftop,
sucking down a cigarette. The fast
edits and tick-tocking sound elicit a sense of nervous nothingness.
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Meanwhile the larger screen reveals a
macro-view of a rusted freight elevator incessantly slamming up and down
between floors without opening.
Wending
down the hall toward the screening room, the chaos of Stephan
Apicella-Hitchcock’s A Drawn-out Conflict becomes audible. In a feature-length montage of the movies Fast Times at
Ridgemont High and
Wild Style the
viewer is faced with a 1982 battle of east coast versus west coast.
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> From love scenes to credits, the plots
of the two films overlap at all the major benchmarks revealing the formulaic
style of both hit movies. A full
viewing of A Drawn-out Conflict edges toward the schizophrenic, but in smaller doses, the
tapestry is like a well-deejayed audio-visual experience.
The screening proper opens with Cluster One.
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> This grouping is arranged around the
idea of the artist’s interaction with, in, and commuting out of the City.
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Grady Gerbracht and Jill Magid capture
elements from their commute: Gerbracht traces the contours of passing scenery
on his bus window in Commutes: NJ Transit series,
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana’> and Magid drags the Empire State
Building with her in a small mirror.
As she drives, the bouncing reflection of the City’s icon slices the
industrial landscape in Suburbia. Legoland, a
second work by Magid, features the Surveillance Shoe, a hybridization of
surveillance hardware and a pair of high-heels. The view afforded from the
vantage point of the shoe camera is a short frilly skirt and legs—the flesh
pillars echo form while contrasting in scale and texture to the surrounding
steel skyscrapers. Dina Weiss and
Chris Habib’s pedestrian recordings document the block.
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Chris Habib’s 3 Blocks, 3 Minutes
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana’> is a study of a walk with a video
camera, a flashlight, and a blackout.
Cluster Two progresses from social commentary couched in
humor to a resonating post-911 work. Marguerite Kahrl’s Grim Tale
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana’> and Intruder
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana’>are enacted by the artist’s characters,
Meek and Timid Action Figures.
Kahrl’s politically conscious fables convey the idea that the nuclear
industry is what we are passing on to future generations. A short documentary
with subtitles, Uri Bar-On’s 72 Virgins is hilarious in its understated style.
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> Interviewees admit willingness
(initially reluctant, finally eager) to provide fellatio to the required world
leaders in exchange for peace.
Picking up on the theme of peace and memory, the rest of the cluster
takes a meditative and somber turn.
Integrating memory and loss, JoJo Whilden’s I shall forget you
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana’> makes a montage of 900 of the
artist’s photographs played back at 30 frames per second. The cacophony of
images is the length of a sigh. Pia Lindman pairs a time-lapse sequence, Viewing
Platform at the World Trade Center Site, with a second video, Waterline
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana’>. Both are underscored by Bridge
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana’>, a sound track of waves buoying
the camera as it films the significant site.
Cluster
Three features three works by Chris Habib. The only segment devoted to a single artist, Habib’s work
stands apart for its powerful well-conceived sound. Naked Pavement, a short documentary on Spencer Tunick’s process, and Nurvus
Crucifix (Matthew Barney had a vein full of Draino and all I got was this lousy
shirt), both interpret
the experience of another artist’s work.
Nurvus Crucifix renders text from an interview with Matthew Barney as a droning
monotone voice discussing his work, from Vaseline to Jackass the Movie
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana’>, played over a hysterical episode
and banshee screeching. A Pot with a Cover, with a Pot in the Cover
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana’> has a lingering electronic voice
accompanying a stark black and white image of a woman washing in a bathtub of
ink.
In Cluster Four, Rory Hanrahan’s Fillmore Lights
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana’> and Liselot van der Heijden’s Monument
Valley, are
complimented by Valerie Nolan’s adjoining installation, Cowboy
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana’>, all dealing with perceptions of
the American West as seen from the international vantage point of these
artists. In the most narrative
grouping in the series, Fillmore Lights follows the making of a cigarette ad.
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> The pathetic lead, a working class guy
in a cowboy hat and white sneakers, is a frustrated and believable mockery of
the Marlboro Man. Complete with a
cigarette jingle and a Hollywood sheen, Fillmore
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana’> discloses the Industry surrounding
the Myth of the Cowboy. Liselot
van der Heijden’s Monument Valley appropriates footage from the documentary of the making
of The Searchers
which is interspersed with scenes of modern day dumpy tourists viewing the same
landscape. The tourist’s camera
shots splice back to the gunshots in the Western. In Valerie Nolan’s 8 mm projection, Cowboy
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana’>, a shadowed figure enacted by the
artist saunters out onto mainstage, is shot, looses his hat, falls dead, and
the loop repeats the cycle of the internationally known stereotype.
style="mso-spacerun: yes">
Intermissions in the program included light-spirited
projects by John Landewe (Red White Spin) and Daniel Jarosch and Falko Purner (Captain
Mosquito and the Vicious Marsupial). Turf, Trans Urban Roaming Forum, was initiated with the
idea in mind that there are still not enough places around to take risks with
unshown artists and untried curators.
Turf—a project room without a room—was formed to facilitate a forum for
emerging artists and curators in borrowed spaces. This was Turf’s third project this season, and its
resounding success suggests that there may just be a need for yet one more
venue for emerging artists. |
