Last week I was in Lido, adjacent to Venice, where the annual Venice Film Festival is held. I had been invited to be on the jury and, naively thinking it would be a kind of summer holiday—Venice and movies? Why not?—I agreed to participate. It was hugely enjoyable—Marco Mueller, the festival director, and his team gathered an amazing selection of movies for the competition—it was almost too much of a good thing for us on the jury, so many of the films were worthy.
We watched 23 films in about 10 days, which actually meant 3 films a day on many days, as the opening and closing days were just one film each. There were some breaks—time for local wine and Venetian cuisine—but in general time was tight. I did get to spend a couple of days exploring the art Biennale, which is still up.
I reserved some bikes, as Lido, the island where the festival takes place, is absolutely flat and has few canals. There's an abandoned hospital complex at one end, completely open, WWII bunkers, and even a farm down at the far end of the island.
Most of our time though was spent watching movies, along with the public, sometimes with the filmmakers, actors and producers not too far away.
We were pledged to secrecy, a policy that Jury president, Darren Aronofsky, articulated at our first meeting. He had some previous experiences with leaks and rumors when Black Swan had its debut a year ago, so our meetings after many of the movies were intentionally set apart from others and we never had our big jury meetings at restaurants, as other patrons might overhear our comments.
The jury was a wonderfully mixed bunch; Darren, already mentioned, director Todd Haynes, actress Alba Rohrwacher (I Am Love), theater and film director Mario Martone, director Andre Techine, Eija-Liisa Ahtila, a fine artist who works in film—and myself. Surprisingly, we agreed on most of our choices and favorites, and though there was some dissension, there were no absolute splits or divisions—no animosity.
The choice of winners was hard—there were some great films that could have been included and hopefully those will not vanish or remain obscure for long. Though we tried to be objective, it is a subjective task. Despite claiming we were not prejudiced against popular films or big US productions, we ended up with a pretty artsy selection—very rigorous films that play by their own rules, which we felt all did so beautifully once that world and its rules were established. Many of these are not "easy" movies and I hope we didn't pick them because we thought they were "deserving" or would get overlooked otherwise... or to show how refined and arty we are.
Here we are, at a particularly difficult moment— happily resolved—though I look pretty annoyed in this photo! Maybe I was just squinting in the bright sunlight. (Thanks Alba for forwarding this.)
Here are the winners:
The Golden Lion Award—A re-imagining of Faust using much of the original German text by Russian director Aleksandr Sokurov. I met the actor who played Mephistopheles, the devil, after the awards ceremony—he was a dancer, not an actor and used to play in a band. Sokurov made an impassioned speech at the press conference in which he pleaded for more state and foundation support for the arts and humanities, saying that if we lose our deep culture we are nobodies, nothing. He ended by saying, and this could be a bad translation "We don't need the audience, the audience [the public] needs us!" It bordered on arrogance, but he's certainly got a point.
After the awards he got calls of congratulations from Putin, the first of which he didn't pick up, so Putin called again! Word has it that he said the same things to Putin—that without support, much art and culture will not survive.
The Silver Lion Award went to People Mountian People Sea by Shangjun Cai. It's a film that follows the lead character's descent into Hell in search of the killer of his brother. We see a side of China most of us have never seen before—junkies, shantytowns, illegal mines and a criminal underclass—so not surprisingly this film was not announced in the running until it was certain that the director and the film had made it to Venice. Even so, the first screening was cancelled due to glitches in the download of the film file from China, the second screening was interrupted by a fire scare in which the theater was evacuated and the third screening was interrupted as well, for technical reasons. One might be tempted to look for a conspiracy...
Special Jury Prize (effectively 3rd place) went to Terraferma by Emanuele Crialese. This was the most accessible and popular of our selections, a film that deals with changing economics on a small volcanic island off the coast of Italy and the influx of African immigrants/illegals. A timely subject and beautifully shot. Many of the "actors" were real fishermen and recent African immigrants who had gone through similar experiences. One of the main actors, an older man, is, in real life, a clown. The young male lead was worthy of a prize, though we decided early on to "spread the wealth" and not double up prizes.
Best actor went to Michael Fassbender for his work in Steve McQueen's Shame. As with his work with McQueen on Hunger, Fassbender goes places most actors wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. This film is about a sex addict, so you can imagine. Carey Mulligan is surprising as well, miles from the sweet girl we've come to know in recent movies.
Best actress went to Deanie Yip for her role in A Simple Life, a film by Ann Hui. In this film she plays an aging woman (much older than the actress) who is cared for her doting son in a Hong Kong retirement home.
The Marcello Mastroianni Award for best new young actor went to Shota Sometani and Fumi Nikaido for their roles in Sion Sono's Himizu. This film, as Todd said, captures the violent mood swings and alternately inflated and deflated world of adolescence in a way that is sometimes crazy, sometimes brutal and sometimes funny. The film also reflects the increasing disaffection and alienation that young Japanese feel for their elders and their government, especially in the wake of the tsunami and the nuclear events that followed.
Best technical award went to Robbie Ryan for his work as DP on Andrea Arnold's new radical reworking of Wuthering Heights. If you've seen her previous films, Red Road and Fishtank, you know she has strong visual ideas and Ryan has been instrumental in realizing the varying looks in all of those. This one, set on bleak moors of England, was stunning.
Best screenplay went to Yorgos Lanthimos and Efthimis Filippou for Alps, Lanthimos' film about a secretive group who offer to substitute themselves for the deceased for grieving parties. Anyone who has seen his film Dogtooth (which I loved) will know what they're in for. Fairly affectless acting and lots of serious ideas about identity, acting, and some very dry humor as well. Pretty much unlike any film you've ever seen.
Here are some of my favorite quotes from our jury meetings. Maybe I will reveal the film and author of the quotes later. Maybe not.
“It gives the point of view of the occupied, using the visual codes of the occupier.”
“A film in a straightjacket.”
“It is an autistic film.”
“I liked his head shape in profile.”
“It keeps stroking the same spot.”
“It's about what is visible and what is hidden.”
“Messy, combustible and out of control.”
“It captured my bad LSD experience very well.”
“ET as the ideal Italian woman.”
“A chicken leg, well done.”
“In Italy we have problem with the mother.”
“A fairytale in reverse order.”
“The bum stroking represented a kind of contact with nature.”
“The end of the world happens every time somebody dies.”
Will Oldham and I wrote songs for director and writer Paolo Sorrentino’s new film This Must Be The Place. Needless to say, that Talking Heads song is in the film as well, in various versions, one of which is a live performance by my band and me. The film stars Sean Penn as a version of present-day Robert Smith of The Cure—an aging rock star who still wears makeup and dresses all in black.
They had a screening in NY recently, but I didn’t want to see the film in rough form, as I figured they’d eventually want me to be present for some public screening when it was done. I offered that they could pick a later screening for me to attend. They picked Cannes—whoa.
I flew Thursday night, arriving the day of the screening. Took a nap, got up and showered, dressed all in white (they said it was OK) and headed towards a rendezvous with the rest of the film people. In the hotel elevator on my way to meet up, two guys entered that looked like private security, but something was off. Their outfits were impeccable, perfectly tailored to their trim physiques—a little odd for cops. Their patches, upon closer inspection, said Beverly Hills Police. I thought to myself “this is probably a precursor of the unreality to come.” I walked to the hotel down the road and in a room were the sound editor, the picture editor, the DP the American line producer, the many Italian, French and Irish producers, Paolo the director, some LA agents and of course some of the actors.
The sound editor advised me that he had been asked to make the live performance of the song “bigger,” and he hoped I wouldn’t be shocked by what they’d done. I’m glad he prepared me! When the song started during the screening, it was more or less as I remembered us playing and recording it in Detroit, but then, as the camera pulled back and you saw more of the “audience,” the sound got bigger and you could hear audience members shouting and some singing along. I bought into it. I believed the crowd was actually that excited and rambunctious, though I knew they were not. They did a good job with the mix to create that illusion, but I wondered how he did it, as none of the extras sang along during the filming.
The sound editor said he was working on another film in London and had about 35 actor/performers on hand in a recording studio, so he threw up a karaoke version of the song and asked them all to sing along. He’s from Sarajevo, and said he was a refugee during the war. His family was totally mixed—Serb, Croat, Muslim—and thus didn’t fit into the emerging post-war situation there, where each of these ethnic groups are now more or less assigned to their own region. What was beautiful about that place before it fell apart was that families like his weren’t uncommon—families in which all the ethnic groups were represented and were cool with one another. Now he’s pretty much permanently relocated to London.
The other songs, the ones Will and I wrote, were meant to be demos that a young character, a singer, hands to Sean’s character, who listens to the CD sporadically as the movie progresses. This conceit wasn’t all that apparent, or so it seemed to me, but the songs did get heard, in bits and pieces, providing a kind of emotional commentary along the way—which was what Paolo intended.
Anyway, back to the screening ritual. There were about 20 town cars lined up at a side door of the hotel, and we were assigned specific cars—Paolo in #1, Sean in #2, me in # 3… These cars drove the 10 blocks or so along the seaside promenade up to the festival building, where crowds, a red carpet and security awaited us. There were no quickie interviews on the red carpet as one sees at the Oscars. This red carpet was carefully managed by a couple of men in formal suits. As if we were being choreographed or conducted by these guys, they directed us using hand signals to face one bevy of photographers, and then, by making a turning motion with their hands, let it be known that we were now to turn to face the photographers on the other side of the runway. Then they used other gestures to herd us a few meters further down the runway, where the same dance would be repeated. Eventually this conducted procession was led up the stairs, and we were directed to stop at various levels and once again turn and face the photographers. Then we entered the theater where there was applause for Sean and Paolo, as a voice of God spoke their names and the title of the movie for all to hear.
Our names were on our seats, so no confusion there. In the row in front of us was Pedro Almodovar, who has a new film in the festival, and we all said hi.
After the film, the lights came up and the applause started—and didn’t stop. The audience stood, as did we all, and a man with a video camera appeared in front of me, shooting Paolo and Sean receiving the applause. It went on and on…is that common here? Does it mean they REALLY liked the movie? On and on it went. I look around, beginning to fidget. Oh, there’s Rosario Dawson in the row in front of Pedro—wow, she’s gorgeous—and oh, that’s Jane Fonda, and there’s some Hollywood exec whose face looks familiar. A publicist motioned for me to go congratulate Paolo, which I did and then I tried to invisibly step to the side so the attention can go back to him.
Eventually the applause died out, and we began the parade back to the waiting cars. Inside the theater women in matching brown outfits confine the audience to their seats while we filed out into aisle. They did this by standing along the sides of the aisle, all holding hands with one another—like some strange feminine cult. They said nothing, smiling, but only a little.
Outside the security was more robust—burly men in gray suits formed a phalanx between us and the photographers, who were no longer confined behind the barriers. As we slowly advanced (and the sound system segues from Saint-Saen’s mysterioso Aquarium movement from The Carnival of the Animals—we were the animals, I suspect—into the Talking Heads version of the title song), this human barrier advanced in front of us, physically pushing the photographers back. The photographers were used to this I guess, but inevitably one or two tried to squeeze in one more snap, and the pushing became a little more forceful. At one point I was distracted as one photographer was somewhat violently shoved back in with his own kind. He slipped to safety behind a barrier.
How did all this feel? Umm, slightly surreal to be sure. Not to be taken too seriously. Flattering, yes—the ovation, of course—but even that might be taken with a grain of salt. This is show business after all, and even the audience is a willing participant in the show. That might sound cynical—their enjoyment and appreciation of the film was largely genuine—wasn’t it? But the cars and the security and the red carpet—it’s all engineered to pump up the glamour and distance the “creators” from the “consumers.” The latter is something I’m a little uncomfortable with.
One works on these things (movies, songs, whatever) often alone, or with relatively small groups. The cast and crew that were present during the couple of scenes I was on set in Detroit was small, and there’s almost no glamour during that creative production phase. The contrast with what happens here is simply hard to imagine, though who would deny that it isn’t flattering? Seductive too, I’d imagine—it’s easy to see how this monster could get a grip on one’s sense of reality.
Onward. Into the cars again and down to a large tent set up down the beach. The entire beach was covered with these white tent things. You can’t see the sand in this town—there’s the promenade, the tents and then the water with its luxury yachts floating nearby. The tents are all party spaces, clubs and restaurants, aligned one after another. A security gal at the tent asked who I was, and looked for my name on her list. I told her my name, and one of the producers jumped in and told her I’m “OK.” Inside girls in VERY short skirts offered everyone champagne. The same group as before gathered in the tent, but we were supplemented by even more invitees. I chatted with a few folks—the head of the Venice Film Festival, whom I met just recently—and then headed to the back area where I was told we folks from the movie are to go. I chatted with Judd Hirsch and his agent. He plays a Nazi hunter in the movie. The women in skirts brought out raw oysters. I heard that Luca, the film’s DP, and some of the crew (production design, costume, etc) are shooting a low budget movie in Napoli, so they would go back to work the next day, just like me. He did an amazing job on this film.
Many American directors and DPs have a habit of covering a scene to death, shooting every angle and approach as a hedge, since they often don’t have a preconceived concept of how each scene will look. I’m generalizing of course, but I think the factory approach of much American filmmaking encourages this, as do the producers who can then have scenes re-cut if they don’t get a good test result. Luca and Paolo didn’t do that. They pretty much knew how each scenes shots would piece together, so, although there was certainly coverage, it wasn’t excessive. Their approach is generally cheaper too, and though I heard the budget bloomed a bit, I suspect it was still done fairly efficiently.
I made my way to the back room, behind the back room, where Sean and some others were sitting around a giant low table chatting. He was engaged in conversation with a tall woman with bleach blonde hair—a singer, I think. She said hi to me after a bit, but I didn’t catch her name. I sat next to some business guys, and we slurped more oysters. Someone ordered a cheeseburger and fries! Courtney Love waltzed in and plunked herself close to Sean, who was at the far end of this massive lounge table, but he didn’t seem to pay much attention. She spotted me and shouted something about “I wish it went for more money!” I didn’t know what she was talking about at first, but then realized she was referring to some of her late husband’s LPs that she donated to Creative Time, an NY arts organization, for a benefit auction—among them were some Talking Heads LPs, I was told. She moved to our end of the table and began to engage with an agent sitting on the other side of me, as well as some other folks—carrying on about 3 conversations at once, all at high speed. She mentioned to the agent that she was clean, except for sleeping pills sometimes and something else—cigarettes? Wine?
She doesn’t look as botoxed and surgically enhanced as I suspected, at least based on recent photos, but when she put her hand on my knee (we’ve never met before), I figured I’d better go. So, when she was fully engaged with the agent, I slipped off, saying I needed the toilet.
I walked back to my hotel along the Croisette (the promenade), which was packed with people. On the other side of the street were luxury shops and soon another screening would be letting out. Some people in the hotel lobby recognized me from the live video feed from the festival screening and shouted “bravo.” In my room I read a New Yorker article on my Kindle about the crazy expansion of the NSA post 9/11, which I think I blogged about at one point, and then I fell asleep. It was a little after midnight, and I wondered if the party would be getting more interesting now.
I went to London this week to do a couple of days of press and promotion for Ride, Rise, Roar—the concert doc on my last tour that Hillman Curtis directed. One piece I did before I got there, for the Sunday Times Magazine, will come out this weekend, and they have a headline that apparently quotes me saying, “Simon Cowell is the Antichrist.” Ah, the British press, always taking the high road. The Times, lest one forget, is owned by a Mr. Murdoch, and was once a venerable, though incredibly stodgy, paper (WSJ—your days are numbered). They were so reserved, in a British sort of way, that they didn’t run news on the front page—ugh, too garish and unbecoming! How Times have changed. I was sent an advance copy and had a jolt—Did I really say that? It doesn’t sound like something I’d say! Then, hours later, I seemed to remember saying something like “The Sex Pistols are not the antichrist [a reference to one of their lyrics]; Simon Cowell is the antichrist.” By which I meant to convey that the devil will not arrive in an obvious way—as a snarling beast or as an anarchist rebel, that would be too easy—but as a smooth corporate dealmaker. I didn’t read any more of the article, so I have no idea what other mischief they may have stirred up.
After two days of almost non-stop talking, I had a full day off (though in the evening there would be a screening and I would do a Q&A afterwards). I decided to try what are referred to here as Boris Bikes—a bike hire system (the mayor of London’s name is Boris) that was recently installed. It is modeled after the French Velib system. Barclays Bank is a sponsor (Boris sold naming rights of the program for £25 million, officially naming the system Barclays Cycle Hire) so they get prominently placed ads on the mudguards and bag holder. Would a US bank do the same? One Goldman Sachs exec’s bonus would probably cover a whole city’s worth of these things.
Anyway, here’s how they do—and sometimes don’t—work.
They have hundreds of these stations in central London, with most stations only a few blocks from one another. There is an online map, a print map and a downloadable PDF that shows where they all are.
There was a station behind my hotel, so that’s where I went first. If you are a subscriber you have an electronic key, which is sent to you, and you insert it into a docking point and a bike is released. If you are a foreigner or “casual user,” as I am, you go to the touch screen, agree to terms—as you would on any online purchase—swipe your debit or credit card, and you’re given a simple number code, which will unlock the bike from the holder.
£1 for 24 hours, no charge for the first half hour and then charges that ramp up after that. This is to encourage fairly short trips—all of mine were, it turned out, under 30 minutes, so I wasn’t charged for time. Hundreds of pounds if a bike is not returned.
Of course, if you’re riding out of the current coverage area in the central city you’re screwed. But presumably the system will expand to Hackney and Shepherd’s Bush. You soon get the concept—that you are meant to drop your bike near your destination, and then pick up a new one at that station when you make your return trip. If both trips are under 30 minutes there are no charges. That afternoon I made 5 trips—hopping from gallery to museum to lunch joint, and it worked with only a few hitches. All legs of my trip were under 30 minutes.
The bikes themselves are sturdy (as you’d expect), with only 3 gears—London has few hills, so it turns out 3 gears is plenty. There are fenders and mudguards, a bell, and front and rear lights that work automatically—powered by a turbine on the wheel hub. They’re heavy beasts—so carrying them up some stairs to a bridge, as I did, was a thing, but on the roads I kept up with the folks on their own bikes, so didn’t feel at a disadvantage.
Problems—yes, there are some. The first time I tried to rent a bike at the station near my hotel it couldn’t read my card. A local arrived, and it didn’t read his stick either. I called the help line to alert them, and the next day it was working (I walked a few blocks to the next station the first day). Usage patterns generate their own set of problems. One station near an art gallery I went to in the Mayfair district was full—there was nowhere to leave my bike, and the clock was ticking! This happened again at another station (Barbican) and I had to once more seek a station a few blocks further away. Likewise, I’ve heard that some stations are more popular than others, and all the bikes are quickly taken. In Paris and Montreal there are trucks that ferry bikes too and fro to remedy this situation. I heard that in Paris no one rides up to the Sacre Coeur in Montmartre, but once there everyone grabs a bike and rides down the hill, so the station at the top is continually running out of bikes. The bikes have fat tires, so street bumps are cushioned a bit. One bike I had needed some gear adjustment—though it still worked. None had flats and all were clean and in good shape.
I saw lots of locals riding them—it’s becoming an accepted way of getting around here. While I was there the weather stayed dry, so I was spared dealing with the British rain. I have a feeling the locals are always prepared with collapsible nylon rain ponchos always ready in their bags. It was incredibly efficient—London traffic, despite congestion pricing, is still painfully slow at some times of day. The streets wind and meander, so a bike is often as fast as a cab, and way faster than the tube or a bus on shorter trips.
One night while I was here I went to have dinner with some friends in Stoke Newington, a charming village-like neighborhood that hasn’t changed much, as there is no tube station nearby—so it’s not convenient for commuters. On the advice of my friends I took the bus back to my hotel (number 73 all the way). I went upstairs, and sitting in the front, 2 seats ahead of me in the almost empty bus, was a man a little older than me (my estimate) with a big gray beard and a scraggly fringe of gray hair. The minute I took my seat he recognized me, and soon after began to chat, in between swigs of a massive bottle of Pepsi. He volunteered, “I’d like to express my creative thoughts, but I’m mentally ill,” conveniently dispelling any questions or doubts I might have had on the matter. I replied that a piece of paper and pencil is all one needs, to start with anyway. But he wasn’t sure. Then he said he liked “keyboard rock,” and I must have looked a little puzzled as he clarified himself —“Emerson, Lake and Palmer.” I don’t know their music, so I didn’t really have a way to engage on that matter. He seemed like a nice man, not scary in any way, though I’d lay off the massive quantities of Pepsi if I were him.
In the afternoon I rode up by Primrose Hill to The Museum of Everything—which is somewhat what it says it is. On the way I passed what from a distance looked like either a decrepit Disney ride or a massive outdoor opera set.
When I got closer, some folks told me it was an abandoned “mountain range” that used to be the habitat for some mountain goats—it was part of the London Zoo. They said it was “listed,” meaning it’s a landmark, and that I might catch a glimpse of some warthogs around the corner—I didn’t.
The Museum of Everything has only been open a short while. Previous shows focused on “outsider” art, an interest of mine, so I was aware of this place tucked behind a public library. The current show is of the collection of Peter Blake, the pop artist best known for collaborating on the Sgt. Pepper cover. He collected old circus banners and posters, elaborate embroideries by a war veteran (my personal favorites) and old sideshow and funfair paraphernalia—lots of it. Great place.
In another few rooms were displayed amazing dioramas by Walter Potter of posed stuffed animals—not tigers and bears, but squirrels, frogs, mice, dogs and cats—all set up in hilarious domestic scenes: playing badminton, boxing, having a picnic and lounging at a pub. One giant diorama called The Peaceable Kingdom had cats, mice and dogs all hanging out comfortably together.
At a gallery in Mayfair there was a show of Cindy Sherman’s new work—wallpaper with pictures of her on it, of course. The outfits were hilarious—a mish-mosh of oddball costumes and ill-fitting items found in someone’s closet. The scale of the images would have been imposing, and even uncomfortably overwhelming, except that possibility was undercut by the fact that is was, well, wallpaper.
The Serpentine gallery in Hyde Park had a show of videos by Philippe Parreno. One featured a Chinese kid and some imaginary friends made of scratches of the film emulsion that reminded me a little of Donnie Darko (one of the imaginary friends was a human size bunny). Another video recreated Paul Fusco's photos of people who turned out to watch the train bearing Bobby Kennedy’s body go by after he was assassinated. These photos were taken from the train in the mid-sixties, and the video recreated the clothes, hairstyles and cars of that period. It was moving to watch for me—the mixture of black and white folks who turned out, men standing in grassy fields, kids sitting and staring, all watching a slow moving train go by. But there was no wall explanation, so I wondered if I was the only one who knew what this was supposed to be in reference to. One had to know the original photos as well, or so I imagine. The Londoners couldn’t possibly know what it was meant to depict, even if the leaflet at the gallery entrance told them—most folks don’t read those. What’s the thinking here? Were there stories behind the others as well?
At the end of this 10 minute film the window blinds raised on motors, and we saw artificial snow falling outside the windows—a lovely effect, as it looked almost, though not quite, real, but not sure how it relates to the videos.
At the Tate Modern there was a room of Soviet Russian posters. This same room had a show of Soviet avant-garde magazine designs from years earlier. Most of the posters were made in the late ‘20s and ‘30s when Stalin came into power, and they were chilling—though once again, one had to know a little to understand why they were so creepy. These were plastered up everywhere at the time—in every little village—to encourage Stalin’s drive for industrialization and the collectivization of the farms. This latter drive was unbelievable in its cold-blooded ruthlessness. It’s estimated that 30 million died of starvation as a result of this effort, especially in the Ukraine—the farming and breadbasket that fed the rest of the Soviet Union.
Here is a poster encouraging the hounding of Kulaks—roughly middle class farmers who were not wealthy by any means. These folks were driven off their lands, and the state took over and ran things as badly and inefficiently as one can imagine. I’m not entirely opposed to the state narrowing the gap between the very rich and the horribly poor, but this was the gutting of the middle class. The poster, called “Drive the Kulaks off the Kolkhoz!” is attributed to Sergei Ivanov in 1930.
Looks a little anti-Semitic, would you say? Nice shirt though! This was 1930—well before Hitler’s rise.
Then up to the Barbican center where there was a survey of 4 decades of Japanese fashion design. A large exhibition—it occupies 2 floors (but it could be even larger), as some of these folks have done such radical stuff and have left such a radical legacy, that it’s hard to absorb it all in a survey like this—but it gives a taste.
They did point out that Kenzo, Issey Miyake, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto—some of the early innovators—brought the Japanese aesthetic of not revealing the body very much to Western fashion—a strange idea at the time. Their clothes weren’t tight or conventionally sexy, rather they were floppy and baggy, with the wearer semi-hidden in a kind of fabric cocoon.
Of course there were other more formal and material innovations as well: clothes made of bamboo, clothes made entirely of one piece of fabric, clothes with extremely subdued color palettes. Sort of conceptual clothes that don’t always flatter the wearer in the normal sense, they were more like artworks in a way. They didn’t reveal their charm or beauty immediately, in fact some looked ugly the first time you see them.
A younger generation—Jun Takahashi, Tao Kurihara, Fumito Ganryo, Matohu, and Akira Naka—have loosened up a little, with some body hugging zones and more bright colors, but the formal and material innovations haven’t stopped. Here’s one made of what looked like a plastic news printed top and shredded documents for a skirt:
It looks like something made from recycled materials in Africa, but I’m sure it cost a fortune!
Another outfit included a matching parasol/hat and large bulbous things around the hips, like Victorian bustles turned slightly to the front.
Some of this younger generation of designers attended St Martins College of Art and Design here in London, but they moved back to Tokyo to begin their practice—an interesting amalgamation of cultures at work.
Last night was the screening of the tour doc Ride Rise Roar, and I did my flogging-the-product-bit by doing an on-stage Q&A with writer Paul Morley after the film ended. It was held at the Ritzy cinema in Brixton—a lovely old converted music hall with a bar/lounge upstairs. There was a satellite truck outside and about 47 cinemas round the UK had simultaneous screenings (projected digitally—not so expensive as it would have been with 35mm) and the Q&A was beamed to them live as well.
Elly (La Roux), whose show I’d seen at Terminal 5 in NY, came by with some of her pals—she lives close by, as is the studio where she’s working on a new record. We chatted about tour disasters. I was flattered.
Went to Antony's show last night at the renovated Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center, which was part of Jane Moss’ White Light Festival—a performance series more calm, Catholic and spiritual than most. This show featured Antony with the Orchestra of St Luke’s, as well as Thomas Bartlett from Antony’s band on piano. The sound in the renovated theater was spectacular. Congrats to Diller Scofidio + Renfrew on their work there; as well as turning what was a socially dysfunctional lobby into a real and vibrant space where some people seemed to be hanging out who weren’t even going to the concert.
The arrangements were by different people, and Nico Muhly described his contributions as being sometimes difficult, but always sight-readable. This was a practical consideration, as Antony toured this show (without the accompanying film) around the world, and at each stop needed to rehearse and perform with a new local orchestra. With limited rehearsal time, the arrangements had to sound good given the time allotted. And last night, they did—some were atmospheric, establishing a slowly shifting ground over which Antony could pour out his heart.
The music portion was accompanied by a film called Mr O’s Book Of The Dead by Kazuo Ohno, a groundbreaking Japanese Butoh dancer who passed away earlier this year. This film, something I’ve never seen before, was contemporaneous with the wild films by Jack Smith made in NY in the ‘60s. Here is a production snap from Smith’s Flaming Creatures.
Apparently, Ohno and Smith didn’t know one another’s work, but the results were remarkably similar. It made one think that this primal dress-up and cavorting style was in the zeitgeist—a case of parallel evolution, one might say. As if it had to appear at that moment, in different spots around the world. A response and evocation of something that was expressed in exactly this way, and now what exactly that was is not obvious to us…though one can see the lineage that extends to Antony pretty clearly.
Here is Ohno (though this is not a still from Mr O’s Book of the Dead).
For those who associate Butoh with the cosmic elegance of Sankai Juku, the troupe who perform semi-naked, covered in powder as if slowly enacting some deep profound and ancient ritual, the group in Ohno's film would be a shock. While there are white-powdered bodies in both, the group in the film also sports tacky women’s clothing and wigs, and in one scene cavorts in a pigsty—the style is a radical departure. And though sometimes profound, more often these Butoh groups evoke the chaos, repulsion and horrors of postwar Japan. Elegant, it’s not; groundbreaking it was—which is why I suppose Antony wanted to bring it to the attention of his fans, and on Halloween Eve no less! It’s a way of showing where he comes from as well.
Anyway, I can’t speak to the other programs in the festival, but seeing this one made me feel that the old, weird (and beautiful) New York that one often hears eulogized so often, as if it is a thing never to be seen again, is still with us.
Not too much to say, but there are lots of pictures.
Visual chaos:
Woody contact paper options — from the paper market street:
A mysterious device — for displaying flowers I suspect:
A painting in a Buddhist temple on the 3rd floor of what looked like an office building. Many, many eyes — hands with eyes in them, a little skull and a calm center with neatly trimmed facial hair:
A series of shrine objects outside the Gwangju Folk Museum. A minute earlier there were a bunch of school kids playing with the va jay jay…ignoring the penis.
An improvised parking space holder (the log so it won’t blow away):
And a tiny fragment of a video by Seoul artist Kim Beom, shown at yet another biennale — the 6th Seoul International Media Art Biennale! What a mouthful! It was a good show though. This video was of newscasters being made to say, via clever editing, things about hair combing and various mundane activities:
Waste Land is a documentary by Lucy Walker about artist Vik Muniz’s “Pictures of Garbage” series, a project done with the help of the pickers at Jardim Gramacho, the largest dump/landfill in Latin America, located outside Rio de Janeiro.
Vik is Brazilian, and though his home and studio are now in NY (Brooklyn), he wanted to “give something back” to Brasil. He had done a series years ago called “Sugar Children” in which he made portraits of the children of sugar plantation workers on the island of St. Kitts, and he says in the film that he considers that series one of his best — I agree.
Vik’s typical process is to take photographs of something, or use a work of art, and then reproduce it using some ephemeral material — sugar, chocolate, Pantone chips, spaghetti — and in this recent series, garbage.
The Gramacho pickers live by the dump, and every day they converge when the trucks arrive, attacking the mountains of refuse, from every class of Carioca. Various people specialize in certain kinds of recyclable materials — plastic bottles, PVC, and almost anything that can be recycled. These are “harvested” and then assembled in containers for another set of trucks to pay for and pick up and take to the recycling center. Here’s Vik at the dump with the pickers in the background.
To make a long story a little shorter, Vik photographed some of the pickers and then asked them to come to his studio in Rio where they help him assemble their own portraits — made from materials they’ve collected — as Vik directs from above.
These pieces are then photographed and the original assemblage is destroyed. The resulting giant photographic prints will, in this case, be auctioned, and the proceeds will go to help the community of pickers.
If you look closely you can see the tires, shoes, bottle caps and plastic bottles that make up the shading and lines of the image.
All good so far — but there was an interesting moment that I can’t forget. Vik and Janaina, his soon to be ex, are discussing, in a very emotional way, a dilemma they face. After working in Vik’s studio making art for a couple of weeks, the pickers don’t want to go back to the dump. “How do you send them back to the farm after they’ve seen Paris?,” as the old song goes.
It’s even more complicated than that. As we witness in the film, the pickers are more or less happy with their lives in the dump. Sure, they want better, and one of them has formed a cooperative to help organize and improve their situation — but we mostly see them laughing, sharing food, helping each other and getting along. We don’t see dead shells of humanity or zombie drones… we see lively, wonderful human beings.
But now they’ve tasted the outside world — suddenly, contemplating the return to their old lives, they’re unhappy. Like the Biblical Fall, a vast sadness has been introduced into the world. A little knowledge is indeed a dangerous thing.
Previously in the doc, Vik has told his own story — how as a lower middle class Brazilian growing up in a situation where to aspire to become an artist was ridiculed, despite the ridiculous odds, he followed his inspiration. He feels that as it was with him, the seed of dissatisfaction will be a prod that will force the pickers to find a way out of their situation. Discontent breeds ambition and action, he maintains.
Others in that discussion are not so sure. Some see the unhappiness of the pickers (who, inevitably, will return to their work) and feel guilty at being involved in their new despondency. After all, it’s not a given that they will be able to better their circumstances — the world is notoriously cruel and unfair. That newfound ambition could drive some to become prostitutes, criminals or drug dealers, it is argued — anything for a quick buck.
This moment in the film opened up a world of questions for me. Charity: does a well meant gift sometimes sow devastation? A one time gift would often seem to have that effect. The tales of the tragedies of lottery and sweepstakes winners are legendary — fights over the money, jealousy, bad investments and conspicuously luxurious purchases. No lasting happiness.
But as has tediously often been said: “Give a man a fish and you feed him once, teach him how to fish and you feed him and his family for a lifetime.” A school and its teachers, employment, and empowerment, are all more important than the immediate gratification that might be asked for, begged for, or might be tempting to give. Bags of grain to Africa might alleviate a famine — a little bit — but that generosity won’t prevent a tragedy from occurring the following year. Who could be so cold-hearted to deny the bags of grain or infant formula? — but without planning, the relief is short lived. Vik’s solution to this dilemma seemed to achieve a balance.
In the same way, simply giving anyone a taste of a more luxurious (I won’t say better) life, or more material goods has the immediate result of increasing envy, jealousy, dissatisfaction and anger. In Vik’s case, though, I don’t think it was exposure to a higher class, or to stuff, but exposure to art that opened up a new world for him as a young man. It wasn’t luxury he was lusting for, but a creative outlet.
[Spoiler alert] But, at least in the film, a series of cards at the end tell us that most of the pickers we followed, and that Vik photographed, have indeed changed their lives — and we are led to believe most of those changes are for the better. The money he raised from the sale of the photos — a lot of money — went to the individuals, but also to their advocacy organization, a library and to buy them their own truck. So while they had the opportunity, if they wanted, to squander their own personal funds, a good portion of the proceeds was also designed to have a lasting effect on the whole community. The transformative power of art — in more ways than one.
Stromboli is an island that is also an active volcano and is fairly close to Sicily. Its population is between 450 and 700. A week ago there was what they call an “explosion”…one of the craters blew out some fiery rocks that set the grasses halfway up the mountain on fire. (None hit the town.) The explosion and fires happened in the late afternoon, and helicopters flew in from the Sicilian mainland and put them out in the morning. The volcano has been erupting more or less continuously for 20,000 years. Most of the eruptions were like the ones we saw — periodic spurts of glowing molten rock, but no lava flows…though there are those too. The most recent was in 2002, after a gap of 17 years.
In 1930 there was a fairly major eruption, and all the inhabitants of the island were evacuated. Magma hit the sea and plumes of steam arose. Flying “bombs,” as they are called, landed in the sea as well, causing a local tsunami.
In those days the two villages here were pretty isolated — no electricity, irregular fresh water, and forget about wi-fi. Stromboli conserves water as best they can via rain barrels and containers that harvest and recycle AC drips, but even so, every week a tanker arrives to bring fresh water to the island.
Southern Italy wasn’t a wealthy area anyway, so for many inhabitants that eruption was the last straw, and they left for elsewhere if they could — Australia, Argentina and the United States had waves of Italian immigrants. In the tiny town of Ginostra (current year-round population: 27 people, 7 donkeys), the church has a plaque commemorating the Strombolian Club of Brooklyn, which sent funds for its renovation in 1940. The members of the club didn’t return to Ginostra, though. In 2003 one of the larger explosions sent rocks raining down on the village, and some houses were damaged.
Ginostra got electricity of a sort a few years ago — via solar panels — so now they can watch Berlusconi’s bimbos on TV.
In 1949 Roberto Rossellini and his then-girlfriend, Ingrid Bergman, made a film here called (in English) Stromboli, God’s Land. It’s interesting as a peek at life here some years ago, but as one local said, “It’s a terrible film! He was blinded by his love for her!”
In the movie she is a Lithuanian refugee in Italy after WWII who impulsively — or, being a refugee, pragmatically (or both) — suddenly agrees to marry an Italian serviceman. He takes her back to his town, his mother and his family, which is Stromboli — doubling for Ginostra. [Spoiler alert!] Young Ingrid freaks out and there is some overacting on her part — though the other performers, who all seem to be locals, and non-actors, seriously underact. Weird combination: calm Italians and one hysterical Hollywood actress. Her new husband in the film eventually boards her up in the house, as she’s getting seriously out of control. However, she manages to escape and heads out over the mountain (still today a more clearly marked path than the way around the outside), and we see her clawing her way over the volcano in hopes of reaching the town of Stromboli and a ship.
The shooting was troubled — partly because RKO, the Hollywood studio backers, wanted a more narrative film than what they got, and partly because Bergman was a bankable star and her affair with Rossellini didn’t go down well with the US public.
During the shooting of this scene of her at the crater, one of the crew died as a result of inhalation of the volcanic fumes.
In the early evening, we hike 40 minutes up a switchback trail to a pizzeria in the middle of nowhere that overlooks the lava flow. From the outdoor seating area one can, as the sun sets, gaze up after a sip of white wine and a mouthful of so-so pizza and see the periodic (about every half hour) explosions of lava from the crater above.
The sound is like a sudden great gushing expulsion of liquid,which it is, I guess — liquid rock. Hiking to the crater itself is prohibited, due to last week's “explosion” in which “bombs” (red hot rocks) landed not just around the crater but also on the inhabited side of the island. These landed among the bushes and grasses about 500 meters up, catching the vegetation on fire. We can see the burnt area from our little hotel room. Had anyone been hiking up to the top they might have been either struck or burned in the subsequent fires.
This is what we saw — the red chunks don’t look as dramatic in the daylight.
Being an island in the middle of the Mediterranean, the seafood is amazing and super fresh. Every morning one can hear the pinched melodic cries of a man with a little motorized cart who wends his way around town selling “pesca fresca” — fresh squid, swordfish and dorado, and whatever else came in that morning.
This is an appetizer of raw marinated fish.
The overnight ferry back to Napoli takes about 12 hours. We sit in the tiny cabin, having some wine and cheese, and watch a Planet Earth nature doc on my laptop. (“Deep Oceans” episode — incredible!)
Went to Atlanta for a bikes and cities panel that was different than the others I’ve done. This one was part of a New Urbanism conference. New Urbanism is a movement that developed at least a decade ago, and the goal is to advocate for less sprawl and a return to cities where pedestrians, drivers, cyclists and the rest all interact — where there is vibrant urban life, rather than the dead zones that many of the US downtowns have become. One branch has become associated with purpose-built towns, the most famous being Celebration, the Disney version of a small town — in all senses of the phrase.
It’s fakey in a way that makes me squirm, but it can’t be denied that it’s a valid alternative to the sprawl that has proliferated everywhere. My parents moved to one of these places — Columbia, Maryland — when I left for college, and it smelled of a managed tastefulness that was simply lifelessness to me. The town decides what colors you can paint your door, or your house, for example. However, there were little town centers within walking distance of most residents, so that was a big change from the typical suburban developments and malls that were taking over the farmland. There was no realistic public transport in and out of Columbia, so it was an island, and without (being able to drive) a car my parents are trapped there.
Not all the New Urbanists are about Disney towns; their interests range from retrofitting dead suburban malls to bike lanes, which is sort of where I come in.
As the taxi pulled up to the Atlanta Hilton, I was surrounded by smiling, handsome black men in a variety of doorman outfits. All charming, and all welcoming me effusively to Atlanta. Southern hospitality — what a change from New York! As I passed through the double doors into the massive lobby, suddenly all the people around me were white. Or at least that was the initial impression. It was like I’d gone through some magical portal — with one group left outside, and another inside. The black people of Atlanta have all the social service jobs and are largely kept separate — outside, if possible — from the white masters. I’m exaggerating, but this is the first impression one gets.
It’s horribly insulting, but it’s as if the masters have created live lawn jockeys, welcoming visitors to their property. Now, to be fair, Atlanta had Andrew Young as a mayor and has a whole slew of black universities, as well as quite a few major music artists of note; but, well, this was my perception.
Atlanta has the worst sprawl of almost anywhere in the country — the amount of time people spend commuting and driving (stuck in traffic actually) and parking is beyond belief. So having a conference here about more sustainable towns that foster a sense of urban life is a bit of a poke in the eye to this city.
In Atlanta, as in many other US cities, in the ’60s, white flight accelerated — fear of a black planet, as the Public Enemy record is titled, had taken hold in a big way. The cities were where you lived if you couldn’t afford to get out. John Portman, the architect and developer, began building massive, futuristic hotel complexes in the center of town. They were so big that once inside, one never had to leave. A fellow conference attendee compared the Marriott Hotel, one of Portman’s projects, to the extraordinary sets for the old sci-fi movie Things To Come, a film directed by William Cameron Menzies.
This shit is real! The future is here… and it’s white! (This is the interior of the Marriott that he built.)
The exteriors of these complexes are awe-inspiring and forbidding; they don’t relate to the street at all — no surprise there — but rather present from the outside a gleaming tower with “fortifications” at street level.
So the street life surrounding these complexes gets killed, as there are no stores, businesses or anything feeling out to the sidewalks. Everything takes place indoors, and it’s all self-sufficient, depending on what you call living. In subsequent decades what are now referred to as gerbil tubes were added to link adjacent complexes. These second floor aerial walkways connect the mega complexes, so that one doesn’t have to come in contact with the dreaded street — or the black people that might be lurking out there — even if one had to, for some strange reason, leave one mega building to enter another across the way. Stores then sprung up on the second floors to cater to these gerbils who never venture onto the streets. Obviously any folks who might have been on the streets, walking or strolling from here to there, were once excluded from those establishments. In fact, to them, those establishments were invisible.
As in LA, many of the entrances to shops and businesses are primarily through the parking lot. The entrances and facades turned away from the streets, and towards either an interior atrium or a parking structure. In Atlanta you can walk for blocks in the center of downtown and find no shops — not any visible ones anyway. There are some restaurants and bars, but no other establishments. There might be interior courts with drug stores, stationary stores, copy shops, newsstands or clothing stores, but access to these from the street isn’t possible.
Now one might say that this inward turning could be viewed in a less skeptical manner; that there might be a kind of civic life that could arise in the food courts and gerbil tubes — a kind of street equivalent — and that I am just being old school and prejudiced. However, it sure doesn’t seem like that is what has happened. People do get supplies at the drug store or gift shop, but the life has been drained out. Any risk of randomness has been eliminated. The reference to gerbils by the locals isn’t that accidental. It seems like an architecture of racism to me… everything is designed to facilitate avoidance of contact with the other.
Here is an early similar structure — the great walled city of Carcassonne in France. Within its walls only those vetted to be appropriate to that town were allowed in.
It’s claimed that when Napoleon III widened the streets of Paris with the help of Baron Haussmann, it was to enable troop movements and to make the avenues sufficiently wide that they couldn’t be barricaded as they were during the revolution. The straightening of these boulevards, it is also claimed, was to allow the troops a straight line of fire on any insurrectionists.
Before the renovation, various social classes lived on different floors of Parisian buildings, so there was a fair amount of mixing, though limited. Afterwards one result of the changes was that rents went up, and the poor were driven to live on the outskirts of town, where they still are today. In a sense segregation was effected that has been partially maintained ever since.
There were quite a few benefits to this urban renewal project too — benefits that significantly improved the lives of the poor — and in this respect, the project was surprisingly enlightened. Sewers were added and access to fresh drinking water (the Seine was long since too polluted to drink) was installed. The right of eminent domain was claimed as many large houses had to be eliminated in order to widen and straighten the boulevards.
There were aesthetic “improvements” as well — buildings next to one another had to have their floors the same height, and it was a rule that quarry stone had to be used on the facades, giving the center of Paris the uniform look we know it by today.
The wide sidewalks and ample air and light on these wide boulevards made sitting in the sidewalk cafes and restaurants pleasurable — and they proliferated, adding to the life of the city.
So, though there may have been some military principles behind the plan, it had its human side too.
Not so for a lot of contemporary government buildings and condos. I’d propose that almost all government buildings have a slight fuck you attitude — they’re meant to be inspiring, but that often comes off as imposing and intimidating. That attitude seems to carry over to luxury condos — maybe it’s the testosterone.
Here are some new condos in my neighborhood:
Here is what could be a dinky condo, but is actually the Chinese Embassy in NY. It used to be a Holiday Inn, with a revolving restaurant and a view of… the Circle Line.
Here is the proposal for new US embassy in London — a modern version of Carcassonne, complete with a moat! We’re back where we started. Every sort of direct approach from the street is blocked, and of course the relationship to the street, where people meet and mingle, is distant and suspicious.
I live in New York, and Manhattan in particular over the last decade or so has sadly moved further in this direction. Though thankfully there is still plenty of life left on most streets, it’s being chipped away at. How can places like Atlanta bring some life into their urban center? I think it’s a long haul, and they should…umm…think small. When I was there, I asked if there were some neighborhoods and communities that might become less car dependent and more people friendly. A couple, maybe, was the reply. I don’t know where they are, but in the center they are not. One could imagine that if there were little town centers outside of the towering urban hospitality zone that one might bike or walk from one’s home to a transportation hub that would then get you to a place of concentrated offices. You’d leave your bike at a parking shelter, like they have at Millennium Park in Chicago. Park and ride, only without the massive car parking. One could also take public transport in, and pick up your bike at a parking/storage place in town and ride to work from there. Or maybe even walk from that drop off point.
If those options or others aren’t available soon, I would suggest that Atlanta residents move to nearby Athens or Savannah if they want a more pleasant life.
Went to Florence and The Machine’s show at Terminal 5 a couple of weeks ago. She’s one of the singers on the Here Lies Love project (title song), and her record has blown up in the UK. She came out in a “dress” that looked like a jellyfish trailing tentacles and proceeded to sing full out for the whole show.
I was on the balcony, and in the area in front of the stage I could see a young woman in a headscarf with her friends, bopping to the music and singing along. Don’t think I had ever seen this before and it gave the lie to many of our preconceptions about gals in headscarves. It was very moving. We’ll take our optimism where we can get it. In my phone video you can barely make her out — she’s in the middle on the left side, about ¼ of the way in.
The other day I watched a Brazilian film called Saudade do Futuro, a documentary about Northeastern musicians in São Paulo. This means the poor Northeast in Brasil, not Northeast as in Connecticut. The film is very poetic — there is almost no voice over, and almost no didactic explanations of what we’re seeing — but those techniques are made unnecessary because the style of music — forró, and especially repentismo — tell the stories of the singers’ harsh lives in the lyrics. The latter style consists of rap/rhyming duels, with the singers also playing pandeiros (tambourines with heads, to us northerners). They describe how they had to leave the Northeast — as Luiz Gonzaga did decades ago — and their struggles to survive in the big city. There’s a lot of humor and innuendo in the lyrics as well. Years ago I went to a forró club in SP and it was lovely — great dancing and live music blasting over a horrific PA system.
The filmmakers intersperse the musical scenes with poetic footage of São Paulo — the stock exchange, the street bustle, the commuter trains — that also have a kind of musicality to them. It all fits together in a way that is lovely but inexplicable.
I saw Caetano Veloso’s show here recently at Terminal 5. He’s touring with a band led by guitarist Pedro Sá. The music from his last two records is minimal and raw — rock with a subtext of samba. Lyrics about relationships gone bad, the US base at Guantanamo and drug addicts. Not exactly feel good stuff — but he manages inevitably to make it enjoyable and even beautiful. His pleasure in performing was infectious. It was the best sound mix I’ve ever heard at Terminal 5.
Sunday night I saw Céu, a singer who is one of the exponents of the kind of electronic-roots hybrids now coming out of Brasil. She does a very contemporary kind of music that’s informed by a myriad of historical (mostly Brazilian) styles. The band was, like Caetano’s, minimal — bass, drums, keyboards, and a guy who played samples by using discs as a DJ might… but in this case he played the discs manually, triggering sounds off his laptop. In the last few years she’s gotten hugely popular — well, everywhere except the USA. I expect that might change soon.
I recently got an email from Annie-B Parson, the choreographer/director who helped on my last tour. She’s in France, where The Anticodes Festival is funding development of a new show by her group Big Dance Theater, and the company is touring their previous show. She said some of her choreographer/dancer pals were upset at Tino Sehgal’s piece that just closed at the Guggenheim. To some of these folks, it seemed like “cheating” — the idea of putting a theatrical/performance/dance work (it is choreographed, in a way) into what is certainly a more financially lucrative context. A museum presumably pays more than doing a similar show at Dance Theater Workshop or The Kitchen.
Of course, Sehgal’s piece is somewhat conceived specifically for museums and art spaces — I saw it at the ICA in London, another art space which, like the Guggenheim, was emptied out to become a rambling shell expressly for this performance piece. It’s true this particular piece wouldn’t work on a conventional, theatrical proscenium stage — but in quite a few alternative performance venues it wouldn’t be too much out of place.
The piece consists of a series of hired people, of ascending ages, who one at a time engage the visitor in “conversation” while leading them around the institution to an encounter with the next conversationalist, who replaces the previous one. In my experience I took it all in naturally — I’m sort of used to being asked curious philosophical questions by total strangers, so this didn’t seem out of the ordinary at all. Well, not much anyway. In London I answered the questions the conversationalists asked sincerely, and didn’t notice the ascending age aspect, or much else, until it was maybe half over. There’s a whole structure here! Duh. I also didn’t try to subvert the piece or ask meta questions such as, “Do you get tired asking the same questions all the time?” It seemed that if one were to experience the piece one had to play along.
As a theater piece it’s unusual, though I’ve seen quite a few that are site-specific. Anne Hamburger, who later became an executive at Disney, did a bunch of site-specific works in abandoned theaters when 42nd St. was mostly shuttered, and one in the Meatpacking District at night when it was still a derelict zone at that hour. There were elements of urban archeology as well as narrative mixed together in those pieces. Noémie LaFrance has staged dance shows in a stairway and in a parking structure. Other theater pieces I’ve seen required interaction and audience movement as well. There’s one that was done in London recently in which the actors are anonymous bodies milling about in a train station crowd, but the audience — seated on benches nearby — can hear them via radio mics… and soon enough can follow a little drama that takes place. So the argument that the Guggenheim show is something in which the context has been changed is not without validity, though I would say that as it seems to have been conceived specifically for these large rambling spaces, it isn’t as much a fish in a different pond as some might claim.
Others have had issues with Sehgal’s business savvy that also relate to context issues. The NY Times reported that he “sold” the rights to a different piece to MoMA for 70k — whatever that means. (Does it mean that it can only be performed under the auspices of whoever now “owns” the piece? And can they presumably have it performed, like hanging a picture they own on a wall, wherever and how often they like?) Maybe the poverty-stricken alternative theater and dance folks got wind of this new kind of transaction and are jealous or incensed that he found a way to cash in on the same kinds of work they’ve been doing for years — except most of them haven’t been getting anywhere near that kind of cash. Should one congratulate him, or is he in fact “cheating”? Would they even want to “sell” a piece in this manner?
When artists who do live pieces perform them in galleries, I’ve been informed that they might not get paid, or at least not much — and admission to galleries, unlike many museums, is free for all, so there isn’t that source of income from which to draw. Often photos of the piece or other ephemera are sold to in effect fund the performance.
Last week I went to the Whitney Biennial and there were a number of pieces I really loved. Pae White’s giant woven piece depicting smoke blew me away (pun intended), but four others struck me as being all about this context issue. Kelly Nipper’s five minute video of a masked woman dancing is, in my opinion, weirdly out of context — much more so than the Sehgal pieces might be construed as being. It’s a single screen video of a short dance. The soundtrack is someone counting numbers. Whether it’s a good dance or performance or not is besides the point — it seems to me it’s better suited for the Whitney’s short film screenings, or a collection of shorts on DVD like Wholphin. Actually, it wouldn’t fit that well on Wholphin, but someone should start a DVD “magazine” of dance and performance work, and there it would be perfect. Similarly, Rashaad Newsome’s almost 7 minute long video of voguing without music has some conceptual underpinning about the movement and gestures being passed on — but it’s pretty much some nice voguing with the typical music removed. Nice to see some cool voguing, but refer to the previous dance piece for suggested placement. Jesse Aron Green’s 80 minute video of some folks doing old (1858) German exercises is an interesting idea, but again, why here?
The work is a dance piece shot — or rather, documented — with a video camera. Lastly there is Marianne Vitale’s video — an 8 minute harangue regarding an imaginary philosophy called neutralism — which is funny and disturbing, but this one really could be included in Wholphin.
I hate being negative about anyone’s work — and I hope this doesn’t come across that way — but in these cases I have to agree with Annie-B’s friends, as I feel that the recontextualization doesn’t add anything. In fact it makes one less likely to watch the whole thing! I might sit down for an 80 minute video of a dance piece at home — or go to a screening, if it is sufficiently filmic… or even watch it at a gathering of friends. But on a hard bench in a museum, no way. The Sehgal piece belongs in a museum much more than these do, in my opinion.
Annie-B pointed out the other day that dance is notoriously hard to film. When we experience dance, or any performance, she suggests that we simultaneously get the big pictures and the details — we see the shapes and bodies moving about on a stage, how the thing is organized, and at the same time, we see individual performers’ bodies and faces. Perceptually, we see with our minds both close-ups and wide shots at the same time. Not everyone is in agreement with this. Others have told me they think we “edit” between the two — making choices as to what to focus on. This would explain why film editing isn’t more jarring to us than we might expect.
Obviously video and film can jump from one to another via edits, or do split screens, but they can’t quite duplicate that experience — that simultaneity — to say nothing of the social/physical experience of being part of an audience. Multiple screens can sort of do it. Annie-B believes that an installation with one screen showing a wide shot and another showing details comes vaguely close. One can be aware of the intensity of an individual performer and at the same time how they relate to the whole… but it’s still a weird substitute. The wide shot that comprises the German exercise video only gives us part of the picture, for example — and a part that is, objectively, the whole thing — but subjectively much of the emotion that we would derive from closer shots is missing.
Movies As a Kind of Installation
Not only dance videos, but a lot of experimental film has recontextualized itself over the last couple of decades. Relatively short videos and films (between 10 minutes and an hour) are often shown in galleries inside black sheetrock boxes, usually with just that same uncomfortable bench for viewers to sit on. There are no “showtimes” and no sense of where one is when one enters the “theater.” You could be near the end or still have an hour to go, there’s no way of knowing. Full disclosure: I’ve done this myself with some of the short (4 minute) PowerPoint-generated videos I created. Most of the time these are not like the above works — documentations of performances — but works in which the editing, the effects, and the manipulation of the footage all contribute.
For filmmakers who show in galleries, the possible upside is that their work can, in this context, be sold for thousands of times more than what these same filmmakers with the exact same work would net from screenings at Anthology, IFC and similar venues. Those film houses used to show the works of Stan Brakhage, Michael Snow, Bruce Conner, the Kuchar brothers and others — work that is not entirely dissimilar from what’s in galleries today. Sometimes, in purely visual terms, the 16mm films they made in earlier decades were easier on the eye than contemporary video works — they had higher resolution, and film, until recently, was simply nicer looking than many of the grainy videos shown in galleries. Film grain in general is nicer than video grain or pixels.
I think that when these works are shown in galleries they are generally sold in limited editions to collectors for sizable sums. What does that mean? Does it mean that the new owner can show them to their friends at their homes but no one else has access to the work? Imagine having one of five copies of, say, Pink Flamingos? Or Gus Van Sant’s Elephant? No one else would know about the film from then on except by hearsay — which, depending on your taste or lack of it, might be considered a good thing. It would be like only seeing the masterpieces — like the one Steve Wynn put his arm through, or the Barnes collection — in reproduction, unless they were lent out from time to time.
One might think these artists are cashing in, but I’m informed that the cash part might actually be negligible. While many more folks may see their work as they pass through the Whitney, for example, the artists would presumably have previously shown the work in a gallery, whose attendance is nothing like the crowds at major museums. Those galleries actually have a pretty hard time selling most video works, so the change of context can’t be all about money in many of these cases. Prestige or glory maybe, but not strictly cash.
At least these videomakers and filmmakers who show in galleries have found a way to get their work out there. Or some have, at least. At last, some might say. Brakhage and many others used to teach to support themselves. They taught young folks how to make films somewhat like theirs… folks who, until this new situation arose, would inevitably be looking to replace Stan at his teaching position before too long. The British artist Steve McQueen used to show in the gallery/museum context, and still does sometimes, but his film Hunger, about hunger striker Bobby Sands, was shown in cinemas. I saw it in Wellington, New Zealand! Likewise Sam Taylor-Wood used to show videos on flat screens in galleries — and maybe she still does — but her latest is a regular feature on the childhood of John Lennon. Cindy Sherman made a movie, as did Robert Longo, David Salle and Julian Schnabel. But those folks didn’t really ever try to survive showing short films or videos — that’s the difference. Matthew Barney does show his films in cinemas, though I doubt these theatrical runs recoup the cost of making the nice prints and ads. I suspect it’s his sculptures that pay for the movies — though the DVDs are sold in limited editions in super elaborate packages. You essentially get an artwork that happens to have a DVD tucked inside it.
Granted, many gallery and museum video installations aren’t things that could ever be screened in cinemas; they are immersive pieces that can’t be experienced in any other way — they have multiple or oddly shaped screens, for example. But… even so, Warhol’s Chelsea Girls was shown on multiple screens simultaneously too, and in regular movie theaters. But despite the success of that film, he mostly had to churn out silkscreens to fund his films — the recontextualization wasn’t an effective financial strategy.
Sometimes the switch in context goes the other way. Not too long ago MoMA curator Klaus Biesenbach did a reversal of this at P.S.1. He took all the episodes of Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s TV series Berlin Alexanderplatz and screened them simultaneously in a museum — as if it were an art installation! There was a circular construction that filled a large room, with all the episodes running at once; in other spaces there were larger fragments from the series projected on screens. Later the films of Kenneth Anger were screened at P.S.1 as well — in a large, dark, rubberized space — again with many films running simultaneously. These were pretty cool environments, immersive and considered, though free of any narrative or episodic structures that might be inherent in the works. They are also miles away from what the filmmakers might have envisioned when they made the work.
At a recent art world dinner Biesenbach mentioned to me that he’d crossed paths with Lady Gaga, who said that she felt she was a performance artist — or an artist of some sort. Biesenbach responded that she was not, and reportedly she was a bit taken aback and stunned at his reply. Biesenbach
didn’t exactly detail as to why in fact she wasn’t an artist, but by way of a
sort of explanation he related that Susan Sontag had pronounced to him, “All we
have is our opinion.” We must be referring to cultural critics like
herself and other curators. Well, her opinions were always backed up by
extremely well-written and thought through arguments, and Biesenbachs’s
opinions now carry the weight of MoMA — so while some opinions are qualified,
some have more resonance and repercussions than others.* On the interweb everyone has an opinion, but most of it doesn’t matter. There’s no pretence of equal opportunity or democracy in the art world — which is probably fine. Komar and Melamid did “democratic” art as a kind of ironic exercise, and from their example I can say we seriously don’t want Wiki culture. According to their poll results, this is what folks in the USA want to see in a painting — even down to specifying that it should be “about the size of a dishwasher”:
I asked Biesenbach about the Fassbinder and Anger shows, and he quoted the attendance figures — 100k or so. Much, much more than might turn up to see screenings of Anger films at Anthology, I replied. The Fassbinder comparison is a slightly more complicated one, because it was originally a TV series — and it’s possible that many more than 100,000 saw it in Germany, though certainly not in the USA. The fact that Anger’s work was made to be watched in a cinema setting, and that changing the context to an installation might be in fact changing the work, wasn’t discussed. I have a hunch that Anger might have approved the rubber, clubby setting as a fun, kinky ambience for his films even if most viewers didn’t watch many of them all the way through in this new setting. His films were already about changing context — throwing leather boys and low car culture in front of bohemian experimental film audiences.
Recontextualizing work is a savvy strategy these days. In an extreme view it might appear that some folks simply move the exact same work around to different kinds of venues until it clicks — and the money magically starts to flow. Some see any presumed cleverness or market savvy on behalf of an artist or performer as distasteful. They feel that serious work should be driven primarily by passion or some kind of authenticity and purity, and that financial considerations — figuring out how to monetize one’s work and activity, as it is phrased in dot-com terms — is tacky, and goes against the rules. What rules? Where are these rules written down? Shouldn’t artists be cheered for making money if they can, if they don’t dilute their work?
The “rules” as I intuit them say that cultural production takes place on some moral and ethical high ground where money is not a consideration. According to these rules, for an artist or musician to take financial factors into consideration is to automatically lower and demean work that is supposed to stem from and engage our higher impulses. The work, once money enters the picture, is now assumed to be “work for hire,” to use the legal term. This is why fine artists often look down their noses on craftspeople, illustrators and graphic designers. During the Renaissance, they worked hard to separate themselves from the laborers of the trade guilds, and worked hard to gain acceptance for the idea that they were more than mere craftspeople — so to risk slipping back into that ignoble territory is completely unacceptable.
Speaking of craftspeople and work for hire, I’d argue that some TV ads, which are most definitely “work for hire,” are as innovative and transporting as any art film you can name. The production values are quite a bit higher, so the poor struggling artist can’t afford to compete. But, as if to balance the scales of value in some way, whispering into our ear is a little guy saying, “But it’s an ad!”
Here’s a recent Audi advertisement that features gymnasts as a machine:
Some ads appropriate — steal might be a better word — ideas from the bohemian art underbelly and redo them with higher production values and tighter editing. The experimental gets absorbed into the mainstream, inevitably. One could cry foul, but to some extent it’s just proof that the idea was good. When I did a feature film, I hired Meredith Monk, Spalding Gray, Jo Harvey Allen and a few others on the performing arts circuit who had inspired me to do what they did, or sort of. Better they themselves get paid and make their own unique contributions than just get copied, uncredited.
According to the old fine art rules, it’s nobler to be poor — which is a cliché for sure, but one that is still held on to dearly. The assumption is that being paid well allies one with the bourgeois one is supposed to be busy offending and shocking. As if anything is shocking today. And making art — if these innovative car ads could be considered art — in service of machines that guzzle fossil fuels is not exactly seen as taking the high road either. Musicians have the same problem — in certain territories one’s peers look askance should one of the old gang get seriously financially rewarded for their work, the hip hop community excepted.
The Theater of Ritual
Along with being upset with Tino Sehgal’s clever dealings, some also view Marina Abramović’s recreations of her earlier performances now on view at MoMA as sacrilege — or at the very least, inauthentic. I can see their point — lots of work that has power in a garage, a funky loft, or in a cold and drafty art space loses some of that power when set in a well-lit white museum room.
The show is a retrospective, so there is a lot of stuff — live people reenact earlier pieces, videos of older pieces run on screens, stills line the walls, and there are also some objects. It’s noisy too, as opposed to what one might imagine these pieces engendered when originally presented — a somewhat respectful silence in the observer. The bustling crowds at MoMA don’t allow for that.
Is it that these pieces weren’t originally created for these museum spaces? Is that what bothers some folks? Are they just nostalgic for the bad old days? Isn’t almost half the stuff in museums — tapestries, frescoes, altar pieces and Greek vases — out of context? Didn’t those objects come from temples, churches and castles? Only contemporary artists really make things for the museum context — giant, oversize paintings and sculptures that wouldn’t fit in any homes I know. The context for many performance pieces might have been more solemn than what I saw — but I have to remind myself that I don’t dismiss all the sacred art displayed in the world’s museums automatically… though I feel a little queasy that much of the power has been drained from it.
Looking at the feats of endurance and bodily mortification on display, I wonder: Are these performances more or less powerful than when Iggy Pop cuts himself or stage dives, or when — to really stretch things — David Blaine lives in a Plexi bubble or is frozen in ice? Are those guys not performance artists too? Are they any less as artists? In some respects aren’t they are doing very similar things? The context is vastly different, again, and something tells me Blaine makes money off his stunts… as did Houdini. So the context seems to be what makes all the difference.
Why, in a museum setting, don't they exhibit all the documentation of early pieces instead — couldn't that make up the show? Because it's sexier, and will sell more tickets, if there are a dozen naked performers on view. And the alternative might just seem a bit too academic and boring.
Another difference, maybe, is that by clearing space around these acts, placing them in a less sensational, muddled, chaotic or media-saturated environment, they are given an aura of solemnity, ritual and spirituality. At one extreme are sideshow freaks and geeks, and at the other is Abramović cutting herself with a razor blade or Tehching Hsieh living in a cage — or even religious ascetics. Iggy and Blaine are somewhere in the middle — though something tells me that Iggy is loved by both artists and sideshow performers.
Here’s a still from the Buñuel film Simon of the Desert, in which a religious ascetic in Spain isolates himself atop a pillar.
I’ve seen Hindu adepts during the Thaipusam festival in Malaysia pierce themselves with steel rods and hooks, and others in Bali attempt to stab themselves with daggers while in trance. The performance of these rituals is open to the public — though it’s not usually advertised as a “show.” SEE the man hang from a hook going through his tendons! SEE the Indian sadhu buried alive! SEE men covered in ash and blood!
Usually it is other faithful who turn out to view and witness — I think that word is key — these acts. And that might be what happens in certain kinds of performance art as well — the art faithful come to bear witness. In many Asian religious festivals there is just as much noise and chaos as at a rock show or at the MoMA, filled with visitors — but the attendants manage to keep their focus despite all the possible distractions.
A sadhu is an ascetic who has renounced the world and seeks liberation through contemplation, often via tests of extreme physical endurance. I would argue that performance art like Abramović’s and that of Tehching Hsieh has a similar goal in mind… and like the sadhus, they present themselves and their mortification of the flesh to the public as examples to be witnessed. They don’t hide their asceticism or physical feats from the public — they’re not locked away in temples or monasteries — quite the opposite. According to the photographer’s blog, the sadhus above quickly disrobed and struck a pose when they saw Boiteau’s camera come out.
Likewise aren’t these artists “striking a pose” in museums? Does that make them, or the sadhus above, less authentic?
The Kumbh Mela, a gathering of ascetics, is the world’s largest act of faith… and that’s saying something. In some areas of India it takes place every twelve years, and in others every six years. The pilgrimage in 2001 was — get ready — attended by 70 million people! Not only did that make it a huge show of faith, but it was also the largest gathering of people ever in the whole world! Woodstock? Feh.
Obviously, not all of these people were sadhus — many came to watch. Some watch out of curiosity, and some as believers who observe as the sadhus act, in a way, on their behalf. Does that make it a show? Many of the acts and images here are undeniably and incredibly theatrical — one could argue that the events here are evidence for an innate human tendency for stagecraft and organized, aestheticized spectacle.
A mosh pit, but more artistic, almost staged… and with mostly older men:
So one way to look at performance art is as a form of aesthetic ritual enacted so that the faithful can bear witness — the art faithful, in this case. As we in the West have lost much of our deep faith, we still long for what is missing, and part of that is ritual — ritual that goes beyond the proscribed and formalized behavior of business meetings, PowerPoint lectures, conferences, frat house initiations, toasts and drinking games. Here, rather, are rituals and performances in which the performer, to some extent, loses their identity — either by disguise, nudity, unnaturally formalized behavior, collective activity or muteness — and using slow and methodical movement (implying considered intent), an action manifests and takes place that resonates with us in some hard to define way. The fact that this resonance is elusive is probably part of the reason ritual has so much power. It’s doing something nothing else can do.
If the museum is a kind of church — and I’m not original in saying that — then besides the art that has become the altars and sacred objects on the walls, one needs the presence of real body-based ritual to complete the cycle of need and connection that we all share. Some smells and bells would be nice too.
In the rituals that adhere closest to the above traditions, it is naturally out of place to buy and sell “rights” to the “performance” — to do so in a religious setting would be outrageous, sacrilege. Performance works that come close to these traditions likewise have a heavy aura.
Germano Celant is the curator who arranged Abramović’s piece “Balkan Baroque,” which was performed at the Venice Biennial in 1997. It has been re-created, or rather re-imagined, for the MoMA show. He felt strongly that much had indeed been lost in translation. In the piece she continually cleans a pile of beef bones, and in Venice the bones still had traces of meat and blood on them — and after a while, it got stinky and foul, and reportedly there were even rats.
While cleaning she sings songs from her Serbian childhood, and tells a story of a Wolf Rat that eats it’s own when it is afraid. It couldn’t be more clear. This conjures an image of the artist as a woman who has taken on the dark chthonic role of scrubbing bones as metaphor for memory, guilt, and pain. It is the artist becoming a mythological figure, a stand-in for historical memory; it’s pretty powerful stuff, even without the rats and smells. It’s a fairy tale image straight out of Grimm. Celant claimed that by cleaning things up — the MoMA bones have no flesh hanging off — the power of the piece is diminished.
Hard to argue with him in this case, but in other instances I see the change of context as being inevitable and well, deal with it. Some folks complained, for example, that all the pieces in Abramović’s show were originally performed by her, and that teaching others to do them is just not the same.
A friend says, “What's lost is witnessing the woman who feels she must endure this penance, the more punishing the better; we're witnessing her self-flagellation, knowing that she finds (somewhere) pleasure in it; the audience gets off on her suffering. That can't happen with paid performers.” The art and the artist (the artist or musician’s body) in this case are presumed to be one, inseparable.
No, it’s not ever going to be the same when someone else does it — but sometimes, if we’re lucky, it might even be better. Though, as my friend says, any presumed masochistic motivations and subtext are gone. People get all nostalgic over bands they saw in dank clubs, plays and musicals they saw with the original cast, and operas with specific divas in the lead roles. Yes, sometimes one cast or one set of musicians is better than others, but sometimes the first incarnation isn’t the best either — sometimes a new performer brings fresh life to a role or song. At some point, when a work is truly without resonance, no one will want to see or hear it anyway, regardless of whether the originator is performing or not.
Some of this might have to do with the presumed connection between the author and performer in certain mediums — but that presumed unity is a whole different discussion.
Songs being re-performed by successive singers who didn’t actually write or perform the songs are too easy to bring into this — we’re used to songs being reinterpreted. I prefer Fred Astaire’s version of Cole Porter’s “Night and Day” over Sinatra’s — though some will go for Bono’s spiritualized version. (There are recorded versions of Cole Porter doing his own songs as well, though I doubt most people would prefer those. So much for the author being the best interpreter.) That a piece — a song, a play, an opera — can be reinterpreted is acceptable. It means we see it again, and from a new angle. New aspects are brought to light or are sometimes obscured, but if it works at all, the song or the role remains alive, which is the point. It’s a kind of continual resurrection, in which the new being is never the same as the old one.
Alternative Models
One could, following a connection between performance art with other performing arts, also view performance art for what it is — a performance, a special kind of show, and a subset or genre of theater. Just as I perform in front of people for money (or not), I sometimes feel that why shouldn’t others be subjected to some of the same forces as I am? — ticket sales, audience attention span, word of mouth and patience. Why not? Maybe, instead of selling the rights to a piece to the Guggenheim, Sehgal and the museum might have considered splitting the income from admissions. Maybe any performance artist, videomaker or artist whose work has no physical manifestation might do the same thing. When there is nothing physical to sell, you can always sell tickets. (Maybe they should even have merch tables like we musicians do to supplement their income and provide keepsakes?) Fundamentally we musical and stage performers don’t have anything to sell either — we are selling an experience that takes place at that moment. That moment and no other. It happens and then it’s gone. If you pay to be there, you experience it — and a live record, still photo or video is a poor substitute, a mere souvenir. A totem, a relic. A phone video? Forget it — it’s not the same.
The downside of that idea — treating performance art as if it is like any other performance — is that inevitably less popular work would eventually get pushed aside because not as many people would buy tickets. (But haven’t less popular musicians, and theater and dance groups, managed somewhat to survive? Yes, but barely — most still make very little money.) Not just less popular work, but work that doesn’t require a long time commitment to experience might also not fare so well. One might want to gaze for a while, in curiosity and weird rapture, at someone uncomfortably suspended on a wall or counting to a million, or at someone living daily life in a window or a cage, but how long can you view these things? How much would you pay for a glimpse? Many are not very theatrically engaging, so would you actually pay to see them? There’s no entertainment value either. These artists begin, as stated, in galleries, if they’re lucky — where admission is free — so only when they achieve enough success to be given a museum show can this admission idea come into play… but by then, they’re broke.
Part of the high art idea is that important work should NOT have to be popular; value, in that world, should not be subservient to market forces. It should not be expected to be simply or mainly entertaining. It’s got a higher agenda. I would say, yes, lofty and serious work should be allowed to exist free of Walmart or Wall Street. However, one could argue that they are simply ruled by another, alternative and more rarefied market with a set of forces of its own — a market that has other criteria and rules of play. Some of these criteria are, as advertised, heartfelt, intellectual, innovative and creative, while others are neither better nor worse than the values of the common market forces — just different, as are those of other unique subcultures: trainspotters, stamp collectors and comic book geeks. Each of these values things according to criteria that they alone understand. There are market forces at work, but only within a proscribed world.
Anyway, I say more power to the artists who can place what they do, without adulterating it, into a context that will possibly provide them a living and ideally expose the work to a larger audience. Even those videos of short dance pieces might be reaching a larger audience than they might otherwise (though I still have issues with whether folks are really watching them). One doesn’t necessarily always do better work with more freedom or money. Sometimes to write you just need a pencil and paper, and you can create a whole universe.
Among musicians there is the aphorism, “The musician who doesn’t pay attention to their business soon doesn’t have any business” — which is a response to the snobbish and romantic attitude that to be pure and authentic one mustn’t be concerned with money.
There’s certainly a difference between simply being on top of your business and letting the business guide and influence your creative instincts. That’s a valid distinction, but the border is often fuzzy. If something is placed in a new context and becomes successful, was it necessarily because the creator cynically tailored the work exclusively to a business plan? Not always. But yes, sometimes.
So, what do I think? I would argue that nothing exists in isolation. Not an original idea, I guess, but we still tend to view things as discrete — songs, performances, artwork — though they’re not. Maybe the stuff around an object, film or performance is as important as what we’re looking at or listening to. Maybe context is the work. In which case we might be back to “all we have is our opinion.” Sheesh.
