Artes Mundi
So Artes Mundi is over for another two years, it’s fourth outing saw Israeli artist Yael Bartana scoop the big prize and now the international circus has left Cardiff, leaving a big hole at the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff.
That this year’s prize-winner was a film maker is hardly surprising in a shortlist choc-a-bloc full of film and moving image. Why should this be so? What is it about film that has so captured the imaginations of artists?
Well, there are some quite prosaic reasons for a film-heavy selection in an international exhibition like Artes Mundi, particularly as many artists come from beyond the passport friendly Eurozone. As visa controls for artists get tougher and transporting large works around the globe becomes increasingly costly and fraught with paperwork, film and video offer a solution – just send off the disks/memory sticks and, even if you can’t get there yourself (there’ve been some close calls and no-shows at previous AMs) at least you can be sure that your work will get there.
But that’s not the only reason and artists have been using moving image for decades. Gary Thomas chair of Lux, the international agency for artists working with moving image, delivered a talk to unpack some of the thinking behind artists’ film-making, as part of the public programme for Artes Mundi 4.
Mur i Wieża (Wall and Tower), One channel RED transfer to 35mm film,duration: 16 min. Courtesy Annet Gelink Gallery Amsterdam; Yael Bartana, 2009
“Artists have always been interested in things [related to their medium]; how life/events unfold over time”, Thomas began, then expanded the notion that artists use whatever materials are available to them and suit their purpose. It’s what artists do with film that sets their work apart from the familiar flickering screens of TV, cinema and computer games.
Playing with notions of time, light and cinema itself, it is not unusual for an artists’ film to engage the with the context in which the work is shown; The white cube of a gallery space is, after all, quite different to the plush-seated multiplexes of the CGI all-action features.
Yael Bartana’s film trilogy - the first two on show at Artes Mundi 4 - uses cinematic conceits and documentary traditions, subverting both. Using the premise that Poland is missing its Jewish population after their decimation in World War Two, the first film, Mary Koszmary (2007) is a call to arms, inviting the Jews back to Poland to help with diversity issues, while the second film, Summer Camp (2007) shows the reality. In scenes that hark back to Peter Weir’s 1985 film, Witness, the Jews return to Poland and begin to build.
As the film unfolds – close ups of earnest faces working together to build a new world; long shots of the compound as it grows – it becomes clear that this isn’t going to be quite the utopia envisaged. The tower looks out across the high compound walls and barbed wire goes up around the perimeter. Is this to keep the occupants in or the neighbours out?
Leaving the second film there are piles of manifesto posters and plans for building a wall and tower – the artist invites the audience to create their own ghetto. The strength of Bartana’s films lie in the fundamental principle that alone we are a bunch of cells adapting to our context, but collectively individuals are capable of adapting the context too. No-one could have envisaged the recent events in Gaza when Artes Mundi 4 was being put together, but they add another perspective to the work of an Israeli artist who is questioning the dogma and received truths of her homeland.
There were other films in Artes Mundi 4, in fact only Fernando Bryce avoided the medium altogether, although his composite of images, artefacts and newspaper articles, all lovingly recreated in Indian ink by Bryce, also reference a multi-stranded filmic approach – long shots: the big historical documents; close ups: the adverts, the minutiae of colonial life. They all add up to a whole that fills a room.
Weltkarte Kopie, Single drawing, ink on paper, 83 cms x 60 cms, from Die Welt, 195 drawings, ink on paper, Courtesy Juan Carlos Verme, Lima; Fernando Bryce, 2008
It’s hard to leave a visit to Artes Mundi without a gamut of feelings about the issues raised. It can seem as if, collectively, the works are shouting, yelling political truths, manifestos for another way. Perhaps the message is being muffled by the medium though; it is after all, the images, not the messages that linger: The family pushing a piano through an airport (Ergin Çavusoglu); The twinkling of mirrors held by children hiding in a giant oak tree (Adrian Paci); Lorries thundering down the no longer romantic Silk Road (Gulnara Kasmalieva & Muratbek Djumaliev); Chinese women waiting for visas for the US or Taiwan (Chen Chieh-jen) or a journey through a museum’s throng (Olga Chernysheva).
The abiding image for me is the man in the little rowing boat, paddling out to an inhospitable rock, with a tree in the bow. This is Yael Bartana’s A Declaration. The tree, placed upright on the rock, replaces the Israeli flag as the camera pans round to show that this is no desert island or rocky outcrop in an empty ocean, but a lump in the mouth of Jaffa harbour.
As Gary Thomas said in his talk:“Artes Mundi tells us about other lives, which brings us back to our own.” And he followed through with:“The best cinema and the best art brings us back to ourselves”. Enough said.