Dara Birnbaum

Fiona Banner at Frith Street

Hito Steyerl, In Free Fall

There are few images more representative of total and utter destruction than that of a plane crash. Hito Steyerl’s film In Free Fall opens with a carefully constructed montage of spectacular, Hollywoodesque aircraft explosions, instantly laying down the contemporaneously allegorical narratives of economic, political and cultural crash.

Structured in three parts; After the Crash, Before the Crash and Crash, Steyerl’s film references the economic collapse of 2008 through the chronicles of a fleet of bowing 707- 700 planes. From their hey-day at Howard Hughes’ TWA, to military service in Israel and on to their final resting place at a small desert airport in California, the planes become subject to the cyclical nature of capitalism and consumer-driven production. Once they become functionless as machines they find new uses as scrap; recycled to make DVDs or destined for the money shot of a block busting film such as 1994’s Speed. There are a number of parallels explored throughout In Free Fall that reveal the comparative destinies of both humans and objects caught up in a repetitive sequence of production and destruction.

Using a portable DVD player placed in the landscape of the desert airport, and employing the televisual technique of chroma key, these images become layered, compositing one image inside the aesthetic, structural frame of another. This produces coexisting narratives that are in essence framed by the very nature of their construction to the point where, as Gil Leung explains in her introduction to the work:

“...it becomes unclear as to the reality of the situation. Out of this surplus of form, it is the now of presentation, not representation, that is experienced through each thing’s own contrary articulations, it is a plane, it is a DVD, this is a historian, this is an actor, this is a pilot... things speak in each others voices.”

A particular moving part of the film involves the acting narrator and Steyerl herself dressed as cabin crew, moving through the gestures of a pre-flight safety demonstration, whilst visible on the portable DVD layer is the video of a man in free fall, struggling to unravel his malfunctioning parachute; his article of hope for survival. This vision is very different to the cyclical modes of crash portrayed through the aircraft. Herein lies the moment of tragedy and a desperate will for the parachute to rectify itself in time. It presents to us most vividly the moment before the crash, the powerful knowledge of an unstoppable disaster. On the other hand, the falling man serves as a warning; one where this dense interplay between crash as the awesome spectacle of a Hollywood movie and the horrific realities of tragedy distorts how we might understand a crash in real terms.

In a talk given by Mark Fisher in conjunction with the exhibition (framed with the question: “Can anything genuinely new emerge in a political landscape that is clogged with ideological junk?”), the position of being ‘after the crash’ was sited as an inherently complex one.  As the catastrophe of a crash unfolds, the very shock of its inevitability induces an urgency to remain in the air, for which Fisher uses the analogy of a cartoon character running off a cliff. In this scenario, mirroring the time since the collapse of the markets at the end of 2008, there is a momentary pause before the plummeting toward the ground ensues, where one must ask the question; what is keeping us afloat now that the ground has fallen away?

'Hope' seems to be a common reply, and indeed the film suggests, in its representation of renewal through capital, optimism is certainly a factor. But while it persists, the very comprehension of the crash and its subsequent ramifications is deferred along with the moment of devastation itself. What Steyerl is presenting, through this postponement of final destruction, is a cannoning of crash where the event is rolled over in to the next stage of production so the moment of crash can begin again.

Returning to Fisher’s question of ideological junk, it is this propensity toward recycling from the detritus of wreckage that reinforces the cyclical nature of capital, thereby eliminating the emergence of anything “genuinely new”. So what might counteract these recurrent episodes of failure? Fisher’s argument is one of practicality; finding solutions to the problems that prevent victory against the onslaught of capitalist realisms denial of fallen ground.

Steyerl’s film is not one of denial; it is as much about the moments of revelation that a crash can produce as it is it’s devastating repercussions. Therefore, whilst I do not dismiss the importance of resistance such as we have begun to see through recent student protests (in fact quite the contrary), works like this demonstrate it is culture that seeks to offset the stagnant, failing ideologies of capital and supply us with that which is genuinely new.

In Free Fall is on at Chisenhale Gallery until 19th December 2010.

Ai Weiwei, Sunflower Seeds

Over 100 million ceramic sunflower seeds currently carpet a large section of Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall; uniquely perfect painted imitations, as if made by nature. Sunflower Seeds by Ai Weiwei is one of those works that can be conjured in the mind before it is seen with the eye. 

Indeed it was just as described, yet disappointingly roped off to the public, at a distance of over a metre.  A sign explains this is due to the danger of the inhalation of dust created by walking over the sculpture.  But even with 20:20 vision it is impossible to appreciate the intricacies of each individual seed at such an inaccessible distance.  

Due to this and in part due to the almost constant swarming crowds that have become an essential feature of Turbine Hall, the work struck me instantly as rather latent.  May it not as well be millions of buttons or chocolate Smarties or those little stony bobbles found in office plant pots? 

It is the accompanying elements of the installation, in the form of a 15 minute film and booth of interactive screens with webcams where the viewer can contribute to debates around the work, that partly answer this question.

The film eloquently details the journey of the sunflower seeds through 30 different processes of production in China, to their installment at Tate Modern.  It quickly becomes clear that the very feat of their quantative and labour intensive manufacture is not necessarily the main feature of the work. 

Neither, infact is its aesthetic impact or physical presence in Turbine Hall.  Even the socio-political symbolism of the ceramic seeds pales in meaningful comparison when considering the implications and efforts of their collective production.

Ingrained in the skills of the people in this rural Chinese town is a legacy of ceramic manufacturing.  Weiwei sought the traditional methods and techniques in making this work and in the process rekindled, if only for a short while, the fading fires of a specific cultural industry that has given work to whole families for generations.

Watching the men and women meticulously cast, shape, paint, fire, clean and pack the 100 million seeds that are now piled and raked to perfection in this monolithic gallery puts to rest all thoughts of treading them like gravel, or even why they are there at all.


Sunflower Seeds is at Tate Modern until 2nd May 2011.

Summer at Tate Britain

The annual switch into summer mode has made the past few months busy ones. Galleries are rife with kids workshops and seasonal salons, whilst the degree shows of London art schools could fill your social calendar for the better part of two months.  However, with some smaller galleries closing their doors for the short sunny season, July and August can often be slow months for the seeker of 'serious' art works.

Tate Britain currently has much to offer with the recent installations of Mike Nelson’s Coral Reef and Duveen Commission by Fiona Banner.  Added to these are particular highlights from the Tate Collection, moving image works by Gerard Byrne and Francis Alÿs.

Originally installed at Matt’s Gallery in 2000, Coral Reef is a series of rooms each simultaneously emulating a sense of absurdity and abandonment.  The estranged objects and paraphernalia present in each room identify as features of a minicab office, a waiting room, traces of a passion for Americana and automobiles, evidencing what Nelson describes as a structure of belief systems functioning under the ideological ocean of capitalism.  Assimilated to the escapism of reading a novel, the work takes you on a path through a narrative of speculatory spaces and constructed déjà vu.

Nelson’s meticulous approach to detail is mirrored in Fiona Banner’s Duveen Commission, which takes the form of two recently decommissioned aircraft.  Occupying the gallery as if to-scale versions from a young boy’s model aircraft collection; the nose of Harrier hovers vertically above the floor, imposing its great whale-like presence on the classical architecture that keeps it from crash landing on to Tate visitors, whose heads are tilted upwards in awe.  Jaguar is buffed shiny, reflecting light and movement; it's fierce elegance rendered motionless, almost invisible. The works mechanical ingenuity chimes well with Francis Alÿs’ film work Guards (2004), originally commissioned by Artangel.

The film depicts the regimented walking of 64 Coldstream Guards through the City of London. At first separated, as if sheep strayed from the flock, they converge, falling into step. On reaching the area’s periphery, a bridge, the Guards disperse, breaking the animation-like presence of the marching costumes.

Room 26 currently displays Gerard Byrne’s video and photographic work 1984 and beyond (2007). A staged conversation is played out between a number of science fiction writers (Arthur C. Clarke and Rod Sterling among them) postulating how conditions and operations of living might change and develop in the future. Taking the text from a 1963 publication of Playboy, the discussion is presented by eleven Dutch actors within the context of modernist architecture.

Awoken from the silence of the pop culture archive, Byrne's film is a strange kind of fictional documentary; the immaculate sets and costume, along with the elaborate dialogue reminds us of our past fascination with assuring the future. Settled between nostalgic melancholy and residual hope, he evidences our desire to follow modernism’s beeline to what would become the failures of utopia; the grand architectural projects, the unfulfilled missions into space, the end of the socialist ideal.

Pictured: Fiona Banner Harrier (2010)

Richard Hamilton, Modern Moral Matters

Richard Hamilton's retrospective at Serpentine Gallery was berated by critics, even though he continues to be impressively referred to as the Father of Pop Art.  The criticism firstly stems from a blatant aestheticising of contemporary political situations and figures and secondly, from the stylistic referencing of other artists such as Bacon and Duchamp; an approach regarded as passé in today's arts practice (there is no denying appropriation, but one is expected to be clever about it!).  But, what is his work if its not Pop?  

After Tate Modern's monsterous Pop Life show a few months ago illustrating the (in some cases inexplicable) rise and rise of artists whose work continues the Pop Art legacy (such as Takashi Murakami and Damien Hirst), one might wonder at such a negative response to an exhibition of one of it's founding fathers.  How far removed is his art since the late 1960's from the work that gave rise to Hamilton's title?  And how is it that Warhol and his successors are still enjoying the pop party but Hamiliton, in taking a turn for the political, is left out in the cold?

Charles Darment, Independent:

"Hamilton's pictures of Bobby Sands and a freshly arrested Mick Jagger, of a monstrous Hugh Gaitskell, tell us everything we need to know about their maker's political views: Sands and Jagger are Christ-like martyrs, Gaitskell a masked devil. I know that painting news images questions the news itself, also that doing so in the mid-Sixties was immensely brave and novel. But I always come away from Hamilton feeling as though I've had a finger wagging at me in a pub, and it is not a feeling I enjoy."

Adrian Searle, Guardian:

"He makes art for a culture that is more interested in commodities than statements, and everything he does has a sheen, an elegance and a technical sophistication that is both attractive and repulsive. There's something sickly and nacreous about his work, which I can only see as deliberate.

One might ask if Hamilton's work really is as analytical, as far-reaching, as acute, as knowing, as deconstructive and as on-the-ball as Buchloh and others assert. Some of it – like those giant images of Blair, with their echo of Warhol's pistol-toting Elvis – seem altogether too obvious, especially when compared to the best political cartoons. Not only do they tell us what we already know, or think we know, they also tell many of us what we already think, politically speaking, which might make us feel smug, but doesn't do much more. We know Blair is a dupe; we know Israel behaves monstrously; we know about the dirty protest and hunger strikes in Northern Ireland during the 1970s. But that, of course, does not mean that art can't be made of these subjects."

Richard Hamilton speaking with Ossian Ward, Timeout:

"Political pictures have different effects - whether moving effects of a depressing kind or effects that can linger for a long time. Some critics have said that this exhibition is stale and that subjects such as nuclear disarmament have lost their interest, but my inclination is that they've become more powerful as time goes by, rather than less... It's a question of timing. I'm sure that it will find its power as time goes by and becomes history. It seems necessary that an artist's attention should be directed at these problems, so I'm not going to give up."

One might choose to follow the notion that all political art should be made politically (an example set currently by Thomas Hirschhorn and others), but does that mean images of politics, characterised by the political photograph, are redundant in an art world still fixated with the representation of popular culture?  My instinct is no, as all images are subject to artistic treatment and/or selection; pornography, violence, death and many other taboo themes are constantly represented in artistic practice, therefore politics should not be made an exception.  

However, it is necessary to differentiate work like Hamilton's from the new landscape of political art, following Benjamin's example; where politics is rendered aesthetic one must respond by politicising art.  Perhaps this leaves Hamilton back where he started; as a cultural mirror rather than a political one, still retaining his title as the Father of Pop Art.

Jennet Thomas, All Suffering SOON TO END!

Comprising of a film and neighbouring installation, Jennet Thomas' solo show at Matt's Gallery presents a paradoxical meeting of the rambling rhetoric of a purple-skinned, evangelical preacher on the doorstep of the suburban home of a pensioner couple.  Inspired by a Jehovah's witnesses pamphlet (of the same name), the film is a portrait of British suburbia punctured by the arrival of the Alice-in-Wonderland-like characters to deliver the utopian dream of a world without suffering.

In an effort to convert the husband and wife, the narrative unravels repetitiously, with the preacher (and his sidekick, the green nun) using a healthy dose of dance music to pound out the promise All suffering SOON TO END!  A trip to a theme park of miniatures and a grow-your-own Adam and Eve add another level of absurdity to a work which does all but sermonise "the circus has come to town".

The tree of knowledge from the film is featured in the installation, from which emanates a voice speaking the original text which inspired the work and a projection of the hypnotic test card from the couple's television screen.  If you're really lucky, you might just meet a preacher or nun whilst you're there, now rendered mute as if a moving costume or life-size doll.

Allowing time to consider the work has lead me to appreciate its density of themes and questions regarding the cultism of conventional and unconventional modes of living and the lingering hopes of idealism in a capitalist system.  But this came to me after the circus had left, or rather, I had left the circus and was able to make sense of an otherwise sensational portrait of absurdity.

All suffering SOON TO END! is on at Matt's Gallery until 6th June 2010.

What will the next revolution look like?

What will the next revolution look like? is a performance by Karen Mirza and Brad Butler which charts the conception of The Museum of Non Participation through video, film, slides and narration.  Situated at Waterside Project Space as part of the current exhibition All that remains... the Teenagers of Socialism, two narrators (Karen Mirza and Nabil Ahmed) navigate the space and the spectators using text and image to recount the projects journey since its inception in 2007.

Whilst on a visit to Islamabad, Mirza and Butler witnessed a violence clash between plain clothes police officers and suited lawyers who were protesting outside the supreme court, from the window of the National Gallery.  Caught between the images of the gallery inside and the images of real violence occurring outside, as witnesses, Mirza and Butler became participants in an important event.

This raises the question; What position do you take?  Do you go outside and intervene, or do you remain a spectator?  What would you do?  As both artists and citizens Mirza and Butler have considered their positions and perspectives in whether or not one chooses to participate.  These questions sparked an investigation into ways of processing the complexities of social and political experience in Pakistan.

Interestingly The Museum of Participation in Urdu translates as The House of the Unexpected,  and indeed that might have been a suitable alternative title for this performance.  The narratives covered not only what had been witnessed and experienced in Islamabad and Karachi, but also posed questions about how resistance is represented.  The Museum of Non Participation focuses on cross-cultural exchange through language and knowledge, but also uses story telling as a method to find and ask the difficult questions about east/west relations, and the representations of those relations.

The most interesting parts of the performance were where the narratives took centre stage.  As they were conveying an important story and raising relevant contemporary issues about the politics of aesthetics, I felt that perhaps the format did not offer much more than a conventional lecture might have.  However, seeing it played out in the space meant watching others watching became part of the experience.  In creating a performance about political dialogic exchange I believe it becomes necessary to instigate a situation where that dialogue might be furthered, as the performance raised questions for me which my familiarity with this project have not been able to answer.

The creation of social spaces and opportunities for new dialogues are increasingly important in artistic practice and particularly where art and politics meet (The Museum of Non Participation's space behind a barbers shop on Bethnal Green Road last year provides an excellent example).  Just as we consider the same question as citizens, as artists we must decide whether or not it is necessary to participate and become involved in issues that affect the world beyond artistic practice.  As The Museum of Non Participation demonstrates, in participating in one system you choose not to participate in others, so the question for us all becomes not whether to participate... but, how?

All that remains... the Teenagers of Socialism exhibition continues at Waterside Project Space until 25th April 2010.

Mike Nelson to represent Britain in Venice

Twice Turner prize nominated artist Mike Nelson has been chosen to represent Britain at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011.

One can only try to imagine what Nelson will conjure up to transform the British Pavilion, but Adrian Searle insists his work must "punch above its weight" if he is to compete with the installation big hitters of recent years such as Elmsgreen and Dragset (2009), Gregor Schneider (2001) and Christian Boltanski at this year's Monumenta.

Nelson's installations offer the possibility to be more than transported, to be transformed; locked in a performance which is encountered rather than conducted, sensational as well as sensory.

Richard Grayson, from his essay on The Deliverance and the Patience:

"We move through the wooden door into spaces that shift us between sweatshop and workshop, travel agents and gambling den, from rooms for pedagogy to rooms for pleasure.  Spaces where we can slip from one state and condition into another.  The immediately startling thing about this is that these spaces and architectures are unpeopled- we have entered some Marie Celeste, and we are perhaps the first person to step there since... well, whatever happened... and first off it is ourselves that we find being shaped and articulated by the spaces as we are cast in the role of part trespasser, part archaeologist and part detective: a person moving through the traces of other's existences trying to understand what catastrophe may have caused this emptiness and what condition may have shaped the inhabitants lives."

Nelson has the opportunity to create something quite incredible, I'll follow Searle in saying "I really hope Nelson does something extreme, and manages to excel himself.  I really hope he fucks with the pavilion, and with our heads."

Pictured:  Mike Nelson Preface to the 2004 edition (Triple Bluff Canyon) (2004) showing as part of Crash at the Gagosian Gallery (2010)

No Soul For Sale

Tate Modern is celebrating its 10th birthday with a weekend-long eclectic festival in the shape of No Soul For Sale: A Festival of Independents, which will take place in Turbine Hall mid-May.  Originally devised by X Initiative, the event had its first airing in June last year at the former Dia Art Foundation headquarters in New York, with 40 independent international arts collectives and not-for-profit organisations taking part.

Inspired by Lars von Trier's Dogville, the event will focus on creating a collaborative, communal, anti-commercial art fair atmosphere where performance, film, music, installation and who knows what else can be watched and talked about, with Tate Modern staying open until midnight on Friday and Saturday to accommodate all the activities.

Visitors at NY's No Soul For Sale opening night will have seen Mexican City-based artist Martin Soto Climent construct a beer can sculpture Impulsive Chorus (pictured above) from 1000 beer cans, kildly emptied and donated by the public throughout the night.

More than 50 organisations/collectives have been invited to take part, including White Columns (New York), Kling and Bang Gallery (Reykjavik), Y3K (Melbourne) and e-flux (Berlin), as well as London-based organisations like Museum of Everything, Auto Italia and no.w.here.

Also, if you visit the gallery on May 12th you may see several hundred cake-carrying school children mildly fatigued from a walk from Borough Market to Tate Modern in honour of its birthday.  So grab yourself some cake and a birthday sing-song if you have the chance.

Curated by Maurizio Cattelan, Cecilia Alemani, Massimiliano Gioni and Tate Modern, No Soul For Sale is on at Turbine Hall, Tate Modern from 14th-16th May 2010.