Publication: Journal Santa Fe Section; Date: Jul 2, 2010; Section: Venue; Page: S8

MOVING

in many forms Exhibition unifies animation and range of moving images History Is Not Art

MALIN WILSON-POWELL

For the Journal

For their exhibition “The Dissolve,” Sarah Lewis and Daniel Belasco, the well-trained scholarly co-curators of SITE’s EighthInternational Biennial, tightly defined a narrow band of art practices that valorizes handmade moving images. Harkening back to1970s garage-band aesthetics and DIY (do-it-yourself) ethics, it calls attention to basic production, folksy stories, and studiedlycrude imagery.

Architect David Adjaye was charged with presenting the diversity of selections by four historical animators and 24 contemporaryartists who make drawings, paintings and puppetry move via a wide variety of techniques into a “seamless experience” that was not“too didactic.” Adjaye triumphs by wrapping raggedy kitchen-table handicrafts in an elegant, coherent installation that uses fabricpanels of different colors to designate three areas.

The first blue area was variously referred to by curators and architect as the nickelodeon, silent productions, or precinema area.Projected here is a thrilling, truly magical 1926 animation titled “The Adventures of Prince Achmed,” thought to be the firstfull-feature animation. Pioneer German filmmaker Lotte Reiniger uses stunning, intricate silhouette puppetry to make episodes from“The Arabian Nights” come alive. Another excellent blue-area video is Columbian artist Oscar Munoz’s masterfully metaphorical“Retrato” (2003), a series of portraits that are evaporating as they are being painted with water on a hot stone surface (formerlyseen at SITE in the excellent 2007 “The Disappeared/Los Desparecidos” exhibition).

In the spacious and open green area, ‘Cinerama,” an interior oval area is delineated with transparent scrims, and meant to evokean immersive social space, suggesting public movie-going. Projected onto suspended screens are two of the most compelling andsophisticated animations in the show. The first is the 1986 “Bang!” by well-known experimental film animator Robert Breer, who hasbeen making complex, enigmatic montages of image and sound since the late 1940s. Next to it is the wild ride of RaymondPettibon’s 2005 animation titled “Sunday Night and Saturday Morning.” Pettibon was a 1970s punk band Black Flag member and,like Breer, excels at exploiting animation’s potential with quick changes of scale, as well as mixing sounds and sources.

The third “We Tube” area is red and, according to Belasco, this mish-mash of old-and-new, large-and-small projections returns theviewer to an individual encounter with technology, emphasizing the isolation and flattening of social experience that takes place inour digital era. The most effective red area works include the tenderness and pathos of Joshua Mosley’s 2004 vignette “A Vue” incontrast to Frederico Solmi’s 2010 “Douche Bag City,” a 15-screen violent video array inspired by teen-boy arcade shooter gamesand gritty graphic novels.

These three areas pinwheel around two central chambers that serve as “knuckle” pieces. The first is an updated 3-D composition ofdancer Bill T. Jones from 1999 footage of him dancing with electrodes attached. Widely shown in 2-D throughout Europe and at theopening weekend performance of early-1980s Bill T. Jones & Arnie Zane choreography at the Lensic, the 3-D cubicle pales incomparison to the visceral power of the company’s live dancing. The other “knuckle” chamber features the 1996 “History of MainComplaint” by William Kentridge, a South African visual artist, whose eraser style of charcoal drawings in motion was prominentlyfeatured in SITE’s 1997 Second Biennial. On June 20, Kentridge was awarded the prestigious Kyoto Prize (worth $550,000) for “hisoriginality as an artist who[se] wideranging activities encompass drawing, animation, stage direction and writing” and for “his deepinsights and profound reflections on the nature of human existence.” If you don’t know Kentridge’s work, this is a must-see.

Unfortunately, the Kentridge video projection is transferred from the artist’s original medium of sparkling 35 mm film and ispixilated. As with thirteen other “moving pictures” on view –– originally made in 35 mm, 16 mm and 8 mm film formats ––everything here is transferred into digital format. As with the installation design, the transfer to digital certainly contributes to theintended seamlessness, as well as being both more convenient and cost-efficient. Yet, I remember with fondness the beautifullyarchitected 2001 Fourth Biennial, when curator Dave Hickey insisted his selection of films by Kenneth Anger and Ed Ruscha beshown in original film formats.

At this biennial’s opening symposium, the curators acknowledged that lively discussions with participating artists, as well as some

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delicate negotiations, were needed to get permission for transfers from film to video. A primary rationale was a desire for all of theirselections to be able to “play together.” Another rationale for the transfer was stated by the curators’ mentor and symposiummoderator Rob Storr, who asserted the modernist notion that each medium having its own formal parameters is now passé. So, is itreally old-fashioned to care for, i.e., to curate, the richness and distinctive qualities of each artist’s original use of materials? Isseamlessness as embodied in this installation a case of abstract discourse trumping art’s materialism? Is it the continuation of anold prohibition against objects in favor of ideas?

Another revelation at the symposium was Belasco’s declaration that while refining their checklist over six years, they used anunspoken criterion of selecting works with “menshelichte” or “human compassion.” So, why is it unspoken?

Could the academic emphasis, beautiful design and digital leveling of this exhibition be a response to a world that seems to bedissolving and devolving with each passing day? It is not an exaggeration to say that a shadow of anxiety has darkened theboosterish, bright-siding of contemporary culture. And, instead of presenting a predictable limp “casting call” biennial, it seems alogical strategy for professional interpreters to draw clear, defensible parameters.

If you go

WHAT: SITE Santa Fe Eighth International Biennial

WHERE: 1606 Paseo de Peralta

WHEN: Through Jan. 2, 2011

COST: $10 general; $5 students, teachers and seniors. Free Fridays.

CONTACT: 989-1199 or www.thedissolve.net

COURTESY SITE SANTA FE

Dance movements morph into kinetic 3-D drawings in “Ghostcatching,” a digital art installation by choreographer Bill T. Jones.

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COURTSEY SITE SANTA FE

“History of the Main Complaint” is a 1996 animated film by South African artist William Kentridge.

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COURTESY MILESTONE FILMS

Prince Achmed and Princess Peri Banu in German filmmaker Lotte Reiniger’s 1926 animated film “The Adventures of PrinceAchmed.”

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