synchronic in the city
On Tuesday I spent the whole day in the city doing things I hadn’t planned on doing. I was supposed to meet someone at 11am for a fieldwork interview (yay! Back on the horse with fieldwork, finally.) But ze called at five to eleven to cancel. Later, A. and I fronted up to the National Gallery to see a Juan Davila retrospective, only to discover that the gallery is closed on Tuesdays. Who knew.
To make up for this, we wandered into “Eyes, Lies and Illusions” at ACMI. It’s awesome. The exhibit that makes it great, though, is “The Sound Before You Make It” by Jaki Middleton and David Lawrie. In the centre of a small white room is a large disc at chest height, covered around the perimeter by three rows of figurines. It whirs and spins faster. Then the strobe starts, with music, and if you can let your eyes unfocus (like for a 3d image) you’re suddenly watching a line of dancers performing this unbelievably fast, unbelievably funky routine. Or you can watch the shadows of the dancers on the wall, performing in perfect synchronicity (more perfect than real dancers could).
I couldn’t make head nor tail of the title — the sound before you make it — but later in the afternoon, in a retro clothing shop above Swanston St, Michael Jackson’s Thriller was playing. The whole album.
Of course, the strobe routine mimics the zombie dance routine from ‘Thriller’, and the title is a snatch of lyric:
You try to scream but terror takes the sound before you make it
You start to freeze as horror looks you right between the eyes,
You’re paralyzed
If the city is sending messages, I interpret them as saying, “Dance now.”
omg omg omg!!! Yes! that kinetiscope is wonderful and totally makes the exhibition one of the best things about your town. an interesting thing that i learnt about this work from a pair of keen bean curators was how tricky this work is to set up: apparently it’s mega sensitive and needs to be set just so in order to work properly. (these two were really lovely, and enthused about the possibility of playing this in a huge empty room, grumbling about the limitations of space; when they grow up to be famous a-guarde curators this’ll be the first thing they do.)
And didn’t you just love the dandy/lion, and the swarm video art, and the knives leaping from one screen to another, and the whole periscope peepshow feel to the whole thing?
Comment by gaylourdes — January 28, 2007 @ 11:44 pm
ah yes that was the most brilliant art in the whole of next wave last year… i think i went and saw it 3 times and at acmi i was glued all over again. it’s just a pity they’ve set it so high.. now the strobe just gets in your eyes and makes them hurt.
i fucking loved the “line describing a cone” too… that was the most interactive fun i’ve had in a museum since i was little and used to go to all those science shows where you press the buttons.
Comment by esther — January 29, 2007 @ 1:29 am
a. was saying that the only improvement they could make on it is to make it bigger — lifesize. coming soon to a really expensive dance party near you.
the show definitely had a peepshow feel to it. voyeurism is lovely. in that particular context.
Comment by Az — January 29, 2007 @ 2:05 pm
ooh, love to know what you thought of the show in general. I loved it, was one of the best things I’d seen in a long time. (review, albeit somewhat tailored to its (generalist) audience, here:
http://www.24hourmuseum.org.uk/london/news/ART24467.html)
I could have stayed in the ‘Light Describing a Cone’ for a *long* time. mmmmmm
Comment by camel — February 6, 2007 @ 7:09 pm
Did you get to see the Davila exhibition before it closed?
Comment by Virginia — March 9, 2007 @ 12:38 am
Damn it, we didn’t.
And hey, how the hell are you?
Comment by Az — March 9, 2007 @ 2:16 am