For almost three years, I’ve carried a little red movie ticket in my wallet, the old-fashioned pulpy kind, from a big roll. It says “Emergency Re-admit” on it. It enables me to return and see Dancer in the Dark, which I went to see one weekday afternoon in 2000. After 15 confusing minutes, I snapped and decided I’d better get back to work, and I hastily, if temporarily, abandoned the controversial film.
Last night, I watched it on DVD, and it blew me away. It’s not just a movie starring a singer, it’s a musical. All this time, I’d assumed that meant it had some aggressively amateurish Sound of Music renditions, with Catherine Deneuve and Bjork as added gimmicks. So I was half-watching while writing when the first actual musical number came on, almost halfway into the film. After that, I was transfixed.
Von Trier was intent on “covering” the musical numbers in one take, as live events–come what may audio-, image-, and mistake-wise– using 100 cameras. It didn’t quite happen that way. They did use 100 fixed, synch-coded DV cameras (140 for one song), covering the entire performance area, and they shot several takes, all the way through. Additional crews shot close-ups of Bjork. The result: a staggering amount of footage (68 hours for one three minute song) and, presumably, a big job in post.
Rapid cuts between fixed shots stands in sharp contrast to the never-resting hand-held camerawork in the rest of the film. From the commentary tracks, the choreographer Vince Paterson, who did the Vogue video, meted out whip-cracking tough love, Madonna-style, on his Dogme-soaked, improv-happy collaborators. Vince made sure the 100 cameras positions and framing was actually based on the staging. His impressive combination of imperiousness and restraint comes through in his commentary, (“We found out it would serve our purpose much better to involve me.”) and it’s not hard to accept von Trier’s comment that Paterson saved the movie.
The limitations of this ultimately low-tech, handcrafted sophistication are apparent, though. Von Trier rightly laments the short cuts it produces: “Maybe if you had 2,000 cameras, you could get some longer cuts and closeups.” At the same time, he argues strongly against editing between multiple takes and for multi-camera coverage of a single performance. It all reminds me of The Matrix Reloaded, of all things. Specifically, the god-like CG camera technique the Wachowksis and Maeda used to film The Burly Man fight, the one with 100 Agent Smiths and thousands of cameras.
Venice: Vidi, Bitchy
The Venice Biennale is finally
Lisa Dennison, chief curator of the Guggenheim (“Where the sponsor’s always right!”), complained to the Times about the curators having too much say. [Or the Guggenheim not having enough: they apparently lobbied hard for Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle to be chosen for the Guggenheim-owned American Pavilion. Fred Wilson got it instead.]
Wilson has an African street vendor selling fake purses at the entrance to his installation of Venetian Moor-related art. Via Vogel: “Richard Dorment, an American who is an art critic for The Daily Telegraph of London, said he was speechless when he saw the pavilion. ‘To put a seller of handbags in front of a pavilion is condescending to both Americans and Venetians,’ Mr. Dorment said. ‘This is a person, not a work of art. Where are the days when major American artists represented our country?'”
[Rowrr. Dorment apparently lived up to his name; his sniping ignores 1) the inside of the pavilion, which many people praised, 2) the major majorness of the 2001 show’s Robert Gober, and 3) Maurizio Cattelan showing a buried person–an Indian fakir, whose praying hands stuck out of the sand–in 1999. And besides, in 2001, Venice was plastered by billboards for some museum exhibition which pulled the same street vendor stunt as Wilson.]
Elmgreen & Dragset’s e-flux poster, starring Lala, image: e-flux.com
People, if you’re looking for Pitti, it’s in Florence. Venetian art parties rank below even Cannes film premieres on the Burdens Likely To Evoke Sympathy scale. It’s a lesson well learned by the Guardian’s Cannes crank, Fiachra Gibbons, who clearly looked on the bright side in Venice. His reports are giddy fun, from his Black Power shoutout for Wilson’s work, and Chris Ofili’s British pavilion to his star-struck love letter to Lala, the diva chimpanzee star of “Spelling U-T-O-P-I-A”, by my pals Elmgreen & Dragset. [There’s something for the blogosphere to figure out: at what point does “in the interest of full disclosure” become “shameless touting of my connection to famous friends”? Ask me tomorrow when I post about my friend, Olafur Eliasson.]
As I sit here in New York, recovering from my A/C-induced cold, I’m working on an “I Survived the Venice Biennale” T-shirt, for those who truly suffer for art. Stay tuned (or feel free to send a design suggestion or two).
Everyone’s Making Movies
Well, Jason is, anyway. It’s a love story. Believe me, you’ll laugh, you’ll cry.
On M. Philip Copp, The Military Industrial Complex’s Goto Guy For “Unfunny Comics”
Discovering The Atomic Revolution–a stunningly drawn, cheerleading 1957 comic book for Our Friend, The Atom–and being in an apocalyptic Animated Musical state of mind, I set out to discover its origins, and its elusive creator, Mr. M. Philip Copp, whose only other known (to Google) publication was a 1952 comic book, Crime, Corruption & Communism.
Frieze Mag’s SMS Reports from Venice
The Venice Biennale is opening right now, and the artworld (minus 1 or 2) is trying to crash each other’s parties. Far from regretting not being there, I am getting a full Biennale experience, thanks to Frieze Magazine’s, SMS reports. For the second morning in a row, we were repeatedly startled awake by my cell phone vibrating across the room.
Here’s one from yesterday: FriezeSMS Venice 03: Text message codes: Pav=Pavilion. Gia=Giardini. Ar=Arsenale. IO=Invite Only. Pa=Party.
And this morning, a splash of a review: FriezeSMS: Not even the Op Art effect of the glittering lagoon prepares you for Ofili + Adjaye’s luminescent rooms. Paradise is within reach. Sun Factor 40…
Last Biennale, too, we waited until later in the summer, avoiding the art masses, at least. Here’s my Sept. 7, 2001 post about the visit, from back when the weblog was young.
Rafael Vinoly on the WTC Competition(s)
[via Archinect] Last month, MIT’s Dept. of Architecture hosted a presentation by Rafael Vinoly, the Al Gore of last year’s WTC
Some highlights: (1:15:00) “Libeskind was courted; he was actually in Germany and decided not to enter, and the LMDC went to Germany to get him– because he was the Owner of Death or something (audience laughter).”
Vinoly may be more polite, but he’s not alone in his criticism of Libeskind. “Dream Teamers” Peter Eisenman and Steven Holl weren’t shy in discussing their disgust, either. And as Gothamist reports, Libeskind’s design is still under fire from many sides.
Though he pointedly doesn’t talk about waking up the next morning to find out they’d lost, Vinoly does give some advice on the Memorial Competition: (1:42:00) Q. Should entrants in the Memorial Competition take the Libeskind scheme as a departure point? A. “The major prob with the [Libeskind] scheme is that the scheme does the Memorial… I know for a fact…that what [the LMDC and memorial jury] are expecting is precisely somethng that actually changes this…Do what you want, because that’s what they’re expecting.”
On Taste Tribes
via Boingboing: On Mindjack, Joshua Ellis writes at length about what he calls Taste Tribes, friendship by cultural affinity–liking people who like the same stuff. Blogs are the engines for the smarter artist/chiefs of their own taste tribes.
I cooked something up along those lines in 1999 at Shagpad, which was based on the Austin Powerish, Abercrombie & Fitchy theory that people bought stuff in direct relation to its ability to get them laid. Or as the VC-Powerpoint presentation-ready slogan goes, “Shagpad.com leverages web and e-commerce technology to monetize aspirational lifestyle portfolios that facilitate getting mad play.” The idea came out of some client work which became, in part, Pop.com (They chose the wrong part, I thought.) At Shagpad are a couple of essays that are not quite embarassing enough to take offline (and besides, the buy-this-lifestyle Amazon links usually pay the hosting).
[Update: It should be noted that I peeled off my friend Jeff’s last name; he’s a sculptor in Red Hook, and the Google searches were beginning to cramp his style. Now that Wallpaper* has declared Red Hook trendy, I’ll probably have to change that, too. Aaron, you have my sympathy.]
Bloghdad.com/Baghdad_Museum_Director_Due_For_A_Private_Lynching
First, the BBC uncovers the truth behind the too-good-to-be-factchecked Saving Private Lynch story, calling it “one of the most stunning pieces of news management ever conceived.”
Now, according to the Guardian, a BBC news program shows the Wholesale Looting of The Baghdad Museum story to be just as made up.
Question for media: When it’s a Ba’ath party official playing you, do you still call it “news management” or is it just lying? Bigger question for media: Now that you’ve been demonstrably
Meteorite Mashes Marfa Minimalist Masterpiece, Maybe?
Mmmm? In Art Papers, the artist Evan Levy tells the story of visiting The Chinati Foundation, Donald Judd’s minimalist mecca in Marfa, Texas. He found “a flaw, a missing corner, in one of the concrete sculptures,” which Judd placed in the field beyond his converted army warehouses. Later, Levy discovered a meteorite nearby, and wondered if it’s “the only intergalactic rock to have struck a work of modern art?” He built a show around it, apparently.
It sounds implausible to me, and not just because he was supposedly forbidden to take any pictures of the sculpture. (I have all kinds of pictures from my trip to Marfa.) But ask him yourself next week. He’s giving a promisingly titled artist’s talk, ennui & asteroids, Sunday June 14th at 2pm at the Sandler Hudson Gallery in Atlanta.
[Bonus alliterative update: Memories of Making Movies in Marfa]
The Art House Project: James Turrell and Tadao Ando in Naoshima
Ando and Turrell collaborated on Minamidera, a Buddhist temple on Naoshima, a small island in Japan’s Inland Sea. Is it worth noting that Ando was a boxer and Turrell was a Quaker? Here is one exchange from their conversation inside the completed space:
Ando:The color is really nice. I have no difficulty just being here for 10 minutes.
Turrell:Sometimes 10 minutes is difficult in modern life. This is fine that the situation of a work like this in a small town, puts together traditional and the contemporary. It’s a way that makes some sense. I think that things in contemporary art must be something for you.They need to be near your life, too. People here at first, may wonder about this work, and about the architecture. Over time, it should be very interesting for them, because other people will come on a long journey just to see their town.
The Naoshima Contemporary Art Museum oversees “The Art House Project,” where disused traditional buildings are restored in collaboration with a contemporary artist. In addition to Turrell, the artists Tatsuo Miyajima, Rei Naito, and Hiroshi Sugimoto have completed Art Houses. The hotel on the island, Bennesse House, was designed by Ando. The crappily decorated rooms each have generally good, unique, contemporary art in them.
Ladies and Gentlemen, We Have a Winner
detail, The Atomic Revolution, image: ep.tc
[Dublog, you rock.] If I could get the artist of The Atomic Revolution to do my Animated Musical, I would. Ausin-based artist Ethan Persoff found the mysterious 1957 comic book at an estate sale, along with “a corporate memo, a vinyl recording discussing Einstein’s theories and a large calendar-sized brochure of modern-art-inspired paintings using a number of atomic weapons companies’ logos.” He scanned it and posted it online.
The caption for the above image reads: “On December 8, 1953, President Eisenhower proposed to the United Nations that the world join together to ‘strip the atom of its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace.’ Even now the United States is building portable atomic power stations that can be shipped by air to any part of the world. These capsules of civilization [??] can be used to produce heat, power, and radioactivity.”
Some of the gorgeous line drawings are based on photographs. They have a stunning combination of clarity, obfuscation, optimism and eerieness. If there was an Government-Issue Version of Detective Story, the noir installment of The Animatrix, this is what it’d look like. Cowboy Bebop director Shinichiro Watanabe did both Detective Story and Kid’s Story, which gives the backstory on Neo;’s exasperating Zion groupie. Free will does not extend to not getting Animatrix. Buy it now. We have quotas to meet.
Bloghdad.com/And_I_Quote
Billmon compiles and documents a list of US administration quotes on Iraqi WMD’s. Additions continue in the comments (but I confess, I could only get through about 20% of them. It seems people ARE talking about something besides the Matrix
Confound me: Wim Wenders’ Audi Roadmovie
I, of all people, should like a sponsored roadmovie featuring an Audi, and a Handspring. Go figure.
Another GreenCine find, Wim Wenders has directed a The Other Side of the Road, a 6-minute filmmercial for the introduction of the Audi A3. See it at Audi’s Germany site. Like most Wenders work, plot takes a backseat to scenery (and since the A3 is a hatchback, it’s a very small backseat). Some grungy couple, a sleek couple, a lot of desert driving, cleverly placed signs with the ad agency’s slogans: admire me, push me, love me, etc.
There’s a Making Of montage, too, which I found more engaging. The whole thing’s wordless, with a repetitive porny soundtrack. And there’s an interview with Wenders in German. The film takes a lot of visual cues from Wenders’ photos (above), which he exhibited in 1995-6.
Film Festival Directors On Film Festivals and Directors
[via GreenCine] David points to a GreenCine article last year where a table of film festival directors review the history and future of the festival.
Some started as propaganda (Venice, Cannes, Berlin), some as flukes founded by freaks, but festivals are constantly balancing the art and commercialism, pure love of cinema with selling out.
How can festivals avoid falling into the trap of becoming just another stop along way for the Hollywood press junket? “Cultivate Internet critics,” insisted [Toronto FF head Piers] Handling. “They are young, they are hip, they are different, they have a very different sensibility. And they are trying to discover young talent, new talent… they are not as fixated on Julia Roberts.”
Bloghdad.com/Roadtrip
One man decides to up-and-go to Iraq and see it for himself. Check out his writings and photographs (via Kottke:
i decided to go, probably, during the second week of the war, when my frustration with the western media had hit a boiling point. it was during the second week that al-jazeera was banned from the NYSE and told by the british to censor its imagery. meanwhile their ratings were skyrocketing and they laughed through a 10-fold increase in viewers while being surreptitiously bombed in baghdad (by american shells). but mistakes happen, people dont get along and wasn’t it a war, anyway?