East New York
[reiteration]
[repeating; restatement]
[flows rip shows peep the recital]
[iteration]
Hostile Takeover
In early summer 2016, uncanny events started to occur at the Hundred Years Gallery, an independent art gallery in East London, UK. Initially, the good people of the gallery did not pay much attention, as they thought it was the benevolent spirit of Melquiades, who had made the gallery his temporary home many a times before. Yet what unfolded over the following three months was anything but benevolent and would change the Hundred Years Gallery forever.
click below to start slideshow
Hostile Takeover was exhibited at the Hundred Years Gallery, London, England; 24 – 30 September 2016
Production
// Production #1//
It would have been really good if all this could have just stayed as crap as it had been.. Cause that would have been better. //
// Production #2//
Better in the same way as a garbage bag, which has been emptied onto the floor, might be more interesting than any piece of art. But only as long as it thinks of itself as garbage, not as art.
//Production #3//
Once upon a time, I withdrew some money from an ATM machine in Dubai.
Since then, everything has been degenerating //Production #4//
//Production #5//
But what about LA?
//Production #6//
and then?….to put what? on the table /// Don’t be intimidated buy this.
May 5, 2016 : 10:14 GMT+1
May 3, 2016; 16:09 GMT+1
May 4, 2016 : 15:31 GMT+1
May 4, 2016 : 15:31 GMT+1
May 4, 2016 : 16:03 GMT+1
May 4, 2016 : 16:34 GMT+1
The Story of the Blue Eyes
Once upon a time, there was a young artist who had eyes of unusual bright blue colour. They exuded the creativity, curiosity and innocence with which he looked at the world and his fellow human beings.
The ‘Blue Eyed Artist’, as he was known, lived in an unassuming little house, which was surrounded by an evil metropolis. Unknown to his wicked landlord, the house was a refuge for fellow artists, bohemians, mavericks and other subversive elements from all over the city. They would gather there to exchange ideas, recite poetry or debate the metropolis and its merciless energy.
One fine evening, a small festivity was taking place in the parlour of the house, when a fellow artist said to the host: ‘Through your blue eyes, I can see your soul! Let me take an image thereof.’ To this, a heated debate ensued on whether an image can take a person’s soul, for good or for bad. The Blue Eyed Artist stayed quiet, at first.
‘I trust in art,’ suddenly, said he, ‘and I trust in you, my Fellow! Take my image.’ And so his image was taken.
The years went by, and the wicked landlord demanded ever more rent, so the Blue Eyed Artist had to go forth and try his luck in the evil city, let it cost what it will.
He soon lost his friends, only to find new ones of the shallow kind, and started to worship insatiable mechanisms that measure the world in zeros and ones. Yet he earned great respect for creating commercial effigies, coordinating communications for global entities and developing interfaces that allow humans to interact with machines. He was known as the ‘Blue Eyed Master’ now, and his creativity, eloquence and personality were highly regarded amongst his peers.
One day, he went on a secret assignment to an undisclosed location, where high-net-worth individuals would regularly congregate to indulge in the nectar of the green Siren. The Blue Eyed Master had gone there to sell retail concepts to unsuspecting international property developers.
He was just about to conclude an important transaction, when suddenly his evil communications device vibrated. An anonymous source had sent him a message containing nothing but a link to a subversive left wing news outlet. A shiver ran down the Blue Eyed Master’s spine. He paused for a moment and with a sense of foreboding, followed the link.
Thereupon, he was looking at a photo of himself, staring at the camera with his blue eyes. Underneath, was written: ‘Would you trust this man?’, followed by a scientific explanation of why men with cold blue eyes are untrustworthy human beings.
After a moment of shock and disbelief, he realised that he was looking at his own self as a young man in the little house many years ago. Long had he felt that he was selling his soul to the devil. Yet looking at his own mirror image, he understood that he himself, in fact, was the ‘Blue Eyed Devil’.
LISBOA
click to start slideshow
Lisboa’ centres around ‘The Protagonist’, who wears a white decontamination outfit, including surgical gloves and a gasmask. We follow him, as he explores a strange city devoid of humans made up of derelict houses, which have their windows and doors bricked up. On some walls of the city, there are images of other places, although it is not clear, if the Protagonist finds them or if he is placing them there.
As the journey evolves, we realise that he is followed by ‘The Antagonist’, a character in a black suit, shoes, gloves and balaclava, carrying a black briefcase. The scenes, characters and settings evoke associations of ‘Scottie’ Ferguson following Madeleine Elster through San Francisco in Hitchcock’s Vertigo. The journey of the two characters through the city is intercut with animations connecting, via the images on the wall, to other places and moments in time.
About one third into the film, the Protagonist finds himself in ‘Rossio Square’, in the centre of Lisbon. Wide, static shots of the Protagonist, in the middle of the empty square, are intercut with handheld, telephoto shots of him amongst crowds of people. On the side of the square, the Antagonist is sitting on a bench, looking into his open briefcase and towards the Protagonist.
We then see a series of shots of the crowd, with recurring focus on the faces of a particular group of people within the crowd. Amongst them, is a man in his mid-thirties with an unusual – upwards facing – haircut. The three sets of shots are intercut and accompanied by a collage of voices and other surrounding sounds, yet they are distorted, as if played by an old audio transmitter. The whole scene, in particular the sound, is reminiscent of a central scene of Coppola’s The Conversation taking place in San Francisco’s Union Square.
The scene is followed by a collage of animations and short scenes of previous encounters of the two main characters. Eventually, we end up back in the city and see the Antagonist walking up a long, narrow and curved path of steps. This is juxtaposed with the Protagonist walking up a hill as well. At the top, he reaches a house, which is partly in ruins. As he starts peeping through a window, we cut to the Antagonist who is now in front of a wall with a bricked up window right in front of him. A long shot reveals that both characters are in fact at opposite ends of the same house.
Cut to: interior scene, the people from the earlier group on the square are dispersed around a room. Some of them are engaged in seemingly absurd activities. In the far corner, a woman with dark hair and a white dress is standing in front of a wind machine, which makes the dress move gently. On the right side of the room, a man is repeatedly moving backwards and forwards taking countless photos of an image stuck to the wall. On the opposite side, a woman is dressing a small, Voodoo type figure. Other people from the group are gathered around a table, watching an old movie on a TV in front of them. Amongst them is the man from earlier with the unusual haircut. While smoking a cigarette and casually watching the movie on the TV, he is cleaning a 16mil Bolex film camera.
At the centre of the room, also facing the TV, is a man, who has been tied to a chair and had his mouth gagged. He has blond, curly hair, and is wearing dark suit trousers and a white shirt. His black tie seems to have been cut off partly.
Cut to: The Protagonist standing in front of a window, which is filled with concrete. In its centre, an image has been attached, showing the never ending loop of images on other walls.
A close up shows the Protagonist’s finger touching and moving over the image. We hear a woman’s voice:
‘Here I was born, and here I died’
As we hear the voice, and other sounds of an old movie, we cut to a close up of the tied up man. He is very agitated and attempts to speak, despite having gaffa tape over his mouth. His eyes are fixated on the TV screen, which is showing a scene of James Cole, the main character of Gilliam’s Twelve Monkey’s, in a cinema playing Hitchcock’s Vertigo. Cole whispers to the person next to him:
‘I think I’ve seen this movie before’
Cut to: Exterior, close up of the image on the wall from earlier, then a wide shot revealing the whole scene: An alleyway with a red suspension bridge in the background. The protagonist is nowhere to be seen, in the foreground, the Antagonist – his briefcase standing next to him – is looking to where the Protagonist was before. Fade to black, end titles: LISBOA
LISBOA was part of Mnemonic City Lisbon. It was exhibited at Roundabout.LX; Lisbon, Portugal; 24 – 30 September 2015
South Bronx, 1984
In this chapter of the story, the Protagonist travels back in time to a place full of romantic memories, but upon arrival finds the place completely bomded out.
He explores the area in search of answers, but there are no inhabitants to be found or any other clues that could bring conclusive answers. Wishing to return to the future he makes his way back to where he came from. He walks for hours, in what seems to be circles, unable to find where he came from, until he realises that he is trapped in his own mechanical time travel instrument.
He eventually resigns to his fate and invents a strange, yet beautiful robotic dance, just to enjoy the eternal melody of time itself.
click on filmstrip to enlarge
South Bronx, 1984 was exhibited as part of Interfaces, which explored the idea of art & technology; Barbican Centre, London, UK; 21 -24 August 2015
25: Network Instrument
The participants were shown an item, taken from the possessions of someone, who was believed to have had some form of contact with each of the participants at least once. The particular item was chosen, because it seemed most likely not to evoke associations other than its acquired operational characteristics. It was therefore considered to be better suited as an aid for the participants to delineate their personal networks without having to take into account any circumstances or events that had, at any point, led to or had contributed to the establishment [or modification] of the network [or any of its constituents part(s)] itself.