It’s interesting how time collapses and how space specificity is
forsaken. In the Performa commissioned piece by Mika Rottenberg and
Jon Kessler, the audience, upon entrance, is taken from the Chelsea
surroundings once navigated before our arrival to an anonymous
laboratory. It is the moment before the door opens that a required
suspension of belief is called upon by the artists. Walking into the
space, we are confronted with robed participants; a few are seated in
the crevice of the gallery, their bodies hunched over with a drenched
towel slung around their neck. Moving from the narrow entrance, the
scene becomes even more ominous, housed inside a cube shaped sauna,
another participant rotates within the form, at all times streams of
steam engulf his body causing sweat to gush from his body. This
sweat, though unseemly, disgusting and insignificant becomes the main
component of the piece. It is harnessed by the conductor of this
practice, swapping these bodily fluids with the characters that appear
on screen, located somewhere on the African continent. The swap that occurs real time and constructed time, continues seamlessly without interruption for the next 30 odd minutes. The biggest discussion around this project seems to be the disappointing conclusion, but I will be the first to say that this ending, though very ridiculous in nature and execution, goes hand in hand with the entire ridiculous set up to begin with. If all the things that I have previously described seem ordinary then we need to talk. Multi colored sweat, magic tricks and the collapse of time, these are the makings of Rottenberg and Kessler’s exhibition, so the animated oasis that springs from the desert African landscape is no stretch of my already suspended state of belief. My main concern instead lies within the lack of integration that existed between the two systems at play, the African landscape and the laboratory. At no point did I feel the worlds truly meld, to make this collapse in time and space at all believable. Whether it was the television screens that created a great barrier, the placement of the televisions, the coordinated actions. This disjunction became ever more pronounced with each passing moment, as their coordination seemed just that, a choreographed attempt to bridge the disparate locales.
forsaken. In the Performa commissioned piece by Mika Rottenberg and
Jon Kessler, the audience, upon entrance, is taken from the Chelsea
surroundings once navigated before our arrival to an anonymous
laboratory. It is the moment before the door opens that a required
suspension of belief is called upon by the artists. Walking into the
space, we are confronted with robed participants; a few are seated in
the crevice of the gallery, their bodies hunched over with a drenched
towel slung around their neck. Moving from the narrow entrance, the
scene becomes even more ominous, housed inside a cube shaped sauna,
another participant rotates within the form, at all times streams of
steam engulf his body causing sweat to gush from his body. This
sweat, though unseemly, disgusting and insignificant becomes the main
component of the piece. It is harnessed by the conductor of this
practice, swapping these bodily fluids with the characters that appear
on screen, located somewhere on the African continent. The swap that occurs real time and constructed time, continues seamlessly without interruption for the next 30 odd minutes. The biggest discussion around this project seems to be the disappointing conclusion, but I will be the first to say that this ending, though very ridiculous in nature and execution, goes hand in hand with the entire ridiculous set up to begin with. If all the things that I have previously described seem ordinary then we need to talk. Multi colored sweat, magic tricks and the collapse of time, these are the makings of Rottenberg and Kessler’s exhibition, so the animated oasis that springs from the desert African landscape is no stretch of my already suspended state of belief. My main concern instead lies within the lack of integration that existed between the two systems at play, the African landscape and the laboratory. At no point did I feel the worlds truly meld, to make this collapse in time and space at all believable. Whether it was the television screens that created a great barrier, the placement of the televisions, the coordinated actions. This disjunction became ever more pronounced with each passing moment, as their coordination seemed just that, a choreographed attempt to bridge the disparate locales.
1 comment:
You should try to write in one voice. You are switching from a third person to a first person voice. Or is this intentional?
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