Pitzer's Narrowcast: Guilt By Association
New exhibit channels life and death, morality, mortality and the god Egbisu
“We believe in killing idiots—people who come to steal our wealth.”
This statement, delivered with intensity and purpose by a villager in the Niger Delta region, unsettles and presents a radical shift in perspective: politics in western democracies is not viewed as a life or death choice. Nor are threats of violence and death made in polite society—the rage is palpable as one machete wielding militant threatens the artist, saying, “You have one day—don’t come back . . . My papa taught me how to hunt.” All that is Solid Melts into Air presents a close-up of the steely determination that is born out of human suffering. Set within the context of global trade, Mark Boulos’ two-channel video installation engages the lingering legacy of colonial relations between the northern and southern hemispheres. Two distinct projections juxtapose commodity trading at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange with the impact of oil drilling in the Niger River Delta.
The militants in Boulos’ video seek protection from their god of war, Egbisu, claiming that bullets bounce off them when they attack the oil rigs. One of these men reflects a more sobering view: his eyes divulge a combination of frustration, anger, and resignation. Acknowledging the possibility of his own death, he proposes that his children will carry on his struggle. The second video channel simultaneously reveals the Chicago mercantile exchange, where the ritualistic gestures of the traders in the pit sustain a counterpoint to the ceremony the armed militants perform, invoking the blessings of Egbisu.
All that is Solid Melts into Air is one of ten video installations in Narrowcast: Reframing Global Video at the Pitzer College Galleries. Narrowcast, which travels to Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) in December, revisits five videos from LACE’s groundbreaking 1986 show Resolution: A Critique of Video Art and pairs them with five recent works. Like its predecessor, Narrowcast presents video on its own terms and brings exceptional international work to the fore.
In contrast to the frenetic energy of All that is Solid, the understated manner of Regina José Galindo’s Quien Puede Borrar las Huellas (who can remove the traces) belies the gravity of her undertaking. Galindo’s actions are so matter-of-fact, yet politics remain a life and death question in Guatemala. At great personal risk, Regina José Galindo filmed herself memorializing 70,000 Mayan deaths. The artist carries a basin full of blood, into which she periodically dips her feet, leaving bloody footprints on the concrete as she walks to the National Palace through the streets of Guatemala City. The ghostly footprints Galindo leaves behind reinforce the anonymity of the victims she commemorates.
Game of Tag by Polish artist Artur Zmijewski also examines guilt, expanding it to collective responsibility. Filmed, at least in part, in a defunct death camp gas chamber, it is with visible awkwardness that the naked participants file into the chamber where their game takes place. Ellie Wiesel explored this territory in his short novel, Night, ultimately portraying the breaking of the human spirit and the surrender to brutality. At the end of Wiesel’s novel, on a forced march, the protagonist shoves his father aside to save himself. The vulnerability of the naked individuals in Tag seems to melt away as the game becomes a metaphor for survival—even as one woman covers her mouth in an apparent gesture of horror.
A view of frozen, snow-crusted earth emerges from a white-out that is the beginning of Chott el-Djerid (A Portrait of Light and Heat). Bill Viola’s seductive 1979 single channel video slows down the tempo of Narrowcast to explore ephemera, starting with the glimmering white surfaces of ice that are oddly similar to the blinding heat of the desert where Viola ends up. The video creates a mesmerizing visual liquidity. Mirage-like images seemingly arise from the desert floor, hallucinatory, scintillating, and illusory. Viola alludes to the perception of water where there is none as a rock is plunked into a shrunken pool in the middle of the baking desert. The desert seems to dance with flames as heat waves rise. Figures materialize, apparition-like in the distance, immersed in, but not consumed by, the heat waves which dance like invisible flames.
Walderedo, by Pablo Pijnappel, provides a complement to Viola’s work. This slow-developing story presents an artist wrestling with his muse, oscillating between creation and hopelessness. Walderedo shares Chott el-Djerid’s drawn out sense of time, sensuality, fascination with physical reality, and existential contemplation. Long periods of silence and travelogue visual-sequences break up the narrative, which blurs fiction and biography.
A number of international video artists have made their U.S. debuts in Narrowcast, and the work challenges with points of view not often heard. The limited focus makes Narrowcast a highly concentrated experience with strong conceptual connections while, visually, it is entirely engaging.
Narrowcast: Reframing Global Video 1986/2008 at Pitzer Art Galleries, 1050 North Mills Ave., Claremont, (909) 607-3143; through Nov. 23.
This statement, delivered with intensity and purpose by a villager in the Niger Delta region, unsettles and presents a radical shift in perspective: politics in western democracies is not viewed as a life or death choice. Nor are threats of violence and death made in polite society—the rage is palpable as one machete wielding militant threatens the artist, saying, “You have one day—don’t come back . . . My papa taught me how to hunt.” All that is Solid Melts into Air presents a close-up of the steely determination that is born out of human suffering. Set within the context of global trade, Mark Boulos’ two-channel video installation engages the lingering legacy of colonial relations between the northern and southern hemispheres. Two distinct projections juxtapose commodity trading at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange with the impact of oil drilling in the Niger River Delta.
The militants in Boulos’ video seek protection from their god of war, Egbisu, claiming that bullets bounce off them when they attack the oil rigs. One of these men reflects a more sobering view: his eyes divulge a combination of frustration, anger, and resignation. Acknowledging the possibility of his own death, he proposes that his children will carry on his struggle. The second video channel simultaneously reveals the Chicago mercantile exchange, where the ritualistic gestures of the traders in the pit sustain a counterpoint to the ceremony the armed militants perform, invoking the blessings of Egbisu.
All that is Solid Melts into Air is one of ten video installations in Narrowcast: Reframing Global Video at the Pitzer College Galleries. Narrowcast, which travels to Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) in December, revisits five videos from LACE’s groundbreaking 1986 show Resolution: A Critique of Video Art and pairs them with five recent works. Like its predecessor, Narrowcast presents video on its own terms and brings exceptional international work to the fore.
In contrast to the frenetic energy of All that is Solid, the understated manner of Regina José Galindo’s Quien Puede Borrar las Huellas (who can remove the traces) belies the gravity of her undertaking. Galindo’s actions are so matter-of-fact, yet politics remain a life and death question in Guatemala. At great personal risk, Regina José Galindo filmed herself memorializing 70,000 Mayan deaths. The artist carries a basin full of blood, into which she periodically dips her feet, leaving bloody footprints on the concrete as she walks to the National Palace through the streets of Guatemala City. The ghostly footprints Galindo leaves behind reinforce the anonymity of the victims she commemorates.
Game of Tag by Polish artist Artur Zmijewski also examines guilt, expanding it to collective responsibility. Filmed, at least in part, in a defunct death camp gas chamber, it is with visible awkwardness that the naked participants file into the chamber where their game takes place. Ellie Wiesel explored this territory in his short novel, Night, ultimately portraying the breaking of the human spirit and the surrender to brutality. At the end of Wiesel’s novel, on a forced march, the protagonist shoves his father aside to save himself. The vulnerability of the naked individuals in Tag seems to melt away as the game becomes a metaphor for survival—even as one woman covers her mouth in an apparent gesture of horror.
A view of frozen, snow-crusted earth emerges from a white-out that is the beginning of Chott el-Djerid (A Portrait of Light and Heat). Bill Viola’s seductive 1979 single channel video slows down the tempo of Narrowcast to explore ephemera, starting with the glimmering white surfaces of ice that are oddly similar to the blinding heat of the desert where Viola ends up. The video creates a mesmerizing visual liquidity. Mirage-like images seemingly arise from the desert floor, hallucinatory, scintillating, and illusory. Viola alludes to the perception of water where there is none as a rock is plunked into a shrunken pool in the middle of the baking desert. The desert seems to dance with flames as heat waves rise. Figures materialize, apparition-like in the distance, immersed in, but not consumed by, the heat waves which dance like invisible flames.
Walderedo, by Pablo Pijnappel, provides a complement to Viola’s work. This slow-developing story presents an artist wrestling with his muse, oscillating between creation and hopelessness. Walderedo shares Chott el-Djerid’s drawn out sense of time, sensuality, fascination with physical reality, and existential contemplation. Long periods of silence and travelogue visual-sequences break up the narrative, which blurs fiction and biography.
A number of international video artists have made their U.S. debuts in Narrowcast, and the work challenges with points of view not often heard. The limited focus makes Narrowcast a highly concentrated experience with strong conceptual connections while, visually, it is entirely engaging.
Narrowcast: Reframing Global Video 1986/2008 at Pitzer Art Galleries, 1050 North Mills Ave., Claremont, (909) 607-3143; through Nov. 23.
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