At
SFMOMA
- Charged Space: Jane and Louise Wilson/Fikret Atay. Work was
still very very bad this week, but all the more reason to sneak out for
a quick video art fix. And then of course I'm home sick today,
but that's another story. The Jane and Louise Wilson piece Stasi
City documents their exploration of the abandoned headquarters of the
East German secret police, and I kept getting chills as they moved
through old interrogation rooms where the cheerful patterns on the
wallpaper and curtains stood in stark contrast to the scenes you can
imagine having taken place there. To view the Wilsons' work you
stand in the center of the room and try to keep up with the quadrupled
images taking place on either side of you, itself a slightly
dislocating experience. I have been following the Wilsons since I
first saw their work in a Turner prize exhibition many years ago, but I
am less familiar with Fikret Atay, the other artist in this
exhibition. In his piece Tinica a young man carefully sets up a
"drum set" constructed out of empty cooking oil tins on a hill
overlooking a city, and proceeds to give one hell of a solo. As
in the Wilsons' video the location is not explicitly stated, but if you
read the description you learn that the city is Atay's hometown,
Batman, a Kurdish city filled with political turmoil near the border
between Turkey and Iraq. Charged space indeed.
Suspense French style + shades of noir + prison break! = Heidi love.
Profiles in Congressional courage:
From Working Assets, Laughing Liberally and Downtown Community
Television: George W. Bush (or at least, a reasonable facsimile
thereof) gives you
Profile #3: Randall Cunningham. Guest appearance by Charles Rangel!
